Holy Christ it's dog balls cold around here

I believe dog balls it the proper scientific term for the level of cold around here. I'm not fan of cold but this is a whole new level of cold. Plus the phrase "central heating" is unknown to the Koreans. They have these industrial space heater things to warm up big spaces (like resturants) and they don't turn them on until you show up so they will sit there in big coats and mittens until you get there and then they turn the heaters on. I can say one thing Koreans aren't wasting energy.

Yesterday at work really sucked because we were in this structure which had no heat and we couldn't get warm so here we are doing work that takes a high degree of dexterity and we are doing it with mittens becasue it is too cold to have your hands exposed for more than five minutes.

You are still at war dummy!

I see why I keep getting these "plum" assignments. My company loves sending me places that are still at war. It took about 25 hours on the road before I finally made it to my hotel in Osan. Looking like military personnel has it's advantages. The customs folks sent me to the US military customs gate and I kinda slipped through without all the fuss which was cool.

I was picked up by a co-worker of mine who works on a different project. He was a god-send the taxi drivers here are super agressive. They will yank your luggage away from you in an attempt to take you to your hotel and overcharge you for the pleasure of taking you to your location (hopefully). I've found in my short time here the language barrier here can be problematic and there is a whole bunch of nodding on both sides even though no one understands anyone else.

The thing that sucked is that my hotel is about 1½ hour away from the airport which happens to be well inside artellery range of the Norht Koreans a fact that everyone seems to want to remind me of every time they get the chance. Where Iraq is very flat, Korea is crazy hilly like San Franscico on steroids.

Iraq and Korea are different on their outlook on war. The fear in Iraq is of the unknown attack. It can come from anywhere. In Korea they know where the attack is coming from so they don't have that same "Everone can be the emeny" attitude but, their fear of compromise of intellegence is through the roof. They are very concerned about losing intel here more so than in Iraq. I suspect it is the differnce between fighting against an sporadic cell based insurgency and a nation state.

The crew here I'm working with is different than the rough-and-tumble rogue's gallery of ecletic indidividuals I worked with in Iraq. Part of it could be the difference in mission and/or the difference in branch (In Iraq I worked with the Marines in Korea it it is the Air Force) but I'm not as much in awe with the group as I was in the case of Shen Long and Ken Obi. I think because a year ago there was such a big knowledge divide between myself and those guys. Today I'm the expert on the system and even though these guys are older than I they are still depending on my expertice.

I'm about to go out now for so dinner and I'm going to get my first chance to visit the city. This will be an interesting experince to say the least.