Rogue's Gallery: Entry 0004 - Shen Long

Shen Long is the head FE here in Iraq. He is pretty much the head FE because he has been here the longest amount of time (almost a year) I have been working with him the past week or so and he has been busting my ass. Shen Long is the perfect manager in my view. He pays meticulous attention to detail, he is someone who reviles in pre-planning, he is attentive to the needs of his staff and he is one to work for the betterment of the staff weather they like it or not. Some people don’t like his methods but to me the guy is a genius you just have to let go of your ego. Once you let your pride fall to the side this guy can show you the world. He is a serious neatnic, which runs counter to my “its good enough/it will fix itself” lifestyle. In his life before Iraq he was a college professor one of the academic elite if you will, he is the type of guy you could picture in his office smoking a pipe and responding to every question you ask with a quote from Chaucer. He is built and looks like Phil Jackson to me with his beard but most of his hair is still brown I would say he is in his mid fifties. He comes off as a person who is very deliberate. He really has everything planned out; he is someone who hates surprises, chaos, and disorder. I on the other hand revel in those environments.

For example while I’m sitting here typing this he has spent the last 2 ½ hours editing a three paragraph email that he wrote before he sends it off. Yes, you heard me 2 ½ hours! I’ve seen him do it before so I know how this works. And I shouldn’t say write emails he crafts emails like he’s Eiji Morozumi or something. When it comes to words he is an artist. Every word has meaning independent of the phrase it is in. Each phrase combines to make a sentence, however a sentence is not whole unless it speaks to the soul of the intended recipient. These sentences, once independent will join with one another, much like water joins with seed and soil, to create a paragraph. Yet paragraphs can only become messages when they are sent. Like the soil, seed, and water they have everything you need but cannot form the orchid until the sun is present.

I honestly think that is the man’s line of thinking when he is sending out emails.

He has been doing a knowledge transfer with me and to be honest with you it has been painful. This guy has actually made me think and I hate thinking. Here’s the biggest secret about me I hate to think, I loathe it. I’m someone who will always do the bare min. That’s why I’m in the industry I’m in, not because I’m good with programming (I’m not) but, I know that once you have a process automated you don’t have to do it again. It’s the ultimate lazy man career choice. People think that I’m smart but I’m really not what I am is cunning. I do enough research to find the buzzwords and key phrases to make it seem like I know what I’m talking about but usually I don’t. If I just “know” something it’s because I guessed.

First of all let me tell you how he set me up. The first week I was here it was like the first week of college. Man we were watching movies on the big screen, staying up all night, getting up whenever we wanted, eating junk food, playing video games, on the internet having contests to see who could find hot pin up girls(Thanks GAF, I won, only to lose). Man this was big fun! I was like this is all I have to? Man this is great!

Then the fun stopped.

This one particular day, I was feeling pretty good. We hadn’t done much all week so I took a shower and put on some Civilian clothes. Well, we get a call from the COC about their projector being out and they have no on screen visual. So we head up to the COC to see what is going on. They say basically an entire bank of computers had no power shore power (the computers were running off battery power) and the projector that was on the same line, as the computers had no power as well. Well simple enough that sounds like a power surge to me so all you need to do is reset the breaker. Well the tried that and nothing happened. So Shen gives me the voltmeter (a device that my Dad showed me several times but I never took interest in it. Hell I’d never need it) and says get under the table and check the outlets to see what kind of current they are drawing if they are drawing any at all.

I’m like, “OK” but in my mind I’m thinking, “How the fuck am I supposed to use this thing? I know it goes in the outlet some kind of way. I sure hope I don’t kill myself.”

Obviously he detected the abject fear in my face so he casually mentions just place the positive and negative components into the outlet and see if they are giving off the proper voltage. Basically I am checking down the line to see where the power failure may have occurred. The thing is these outlets are under these specially made tables so I have to crawl under these tables and lay on my back to get these readings. The floors in Iraq are filthy from the dust and mud and God knows whatever else may be on the floor. Well I isolate where the power failure is coming from and as I move to jiggle a wire you hear a loud pop and then the projector comes back on and all the computers start working of shore power. What happened was that one of the Marines feet pulled on the main power cable and disconnected it slightly from the shore power.Well I just gotten out of the shower and now I’m covered in dust from head to toe and that was just the beginning.