Dubai

Dubai. Let's talk about Dubai, specifically the region of Jebel Ali.
First off finding it on your map indicated the precarious location of this particular port visit, and it's been an interesting one. I haven't really been able to write about it until now, since we've already left it behind us and have moved on. In order to get to this port, we had to travel through what is known as "the straights of ??????" and it a tight, dangerous section of water for us to go through. Tensions were high around combat all night, and as the ships defense systems tech/operator, let me tell you it was a long night and one where we were all very alert. However other than the occasional odd vessel trailing us, we made it through clean and with no issues at all, and into the main gulf of this region. The day we were to pull into port, the admiral came over the ship's announcement system, and told us that due to a threat that was discovered, our port visit would be delayed 24hrs, or cancelled all together. So, my first impressions was not very good let me assure you. However about 24hrs later, we did decide to pull in.
The first thing I noticed about this area is the heat. And saying this place is hot is like saying the ocean has some water in it, it's pretty much the understatement of a lifetime. It's insane how hot it is here, and isn't something you can understand till you get here, especially on a massive ship made of solid steel. Average temp while we were in port was 110degrees during the day and 92degrees at night. Good stuff. Due to a religious holiday known as Ramadan, our dress code and conduct is very strict over here. No shorts out in town (that's right long pants
only) and other things like you can't show the bottoms of your shoes in public. This was hard for me, cause normally when I sit down, I prop my ankle up on my knees like a normal person, but that's a major no no and people get very angry about it. Things like that.

So, first day out, here we go. We were all a little nervous about leaving our base and going out in town both because of where we are, and the perceived threat against us before hand. So when my friends and I got on the little weird bus that takes us to town, we were all wary.
About halfway, traffic slowed dramatically and we were nearing an overpass. One of my friends pointed and jokingly said hey man, think we have reason to be nervous? So I look where he's pointing and there is a small group of local men gathered on the overpass directly above the road. So everyone on the bus is looking around, and the same friend stands up and loudly says, "dude there's a body in the road". He repeats, shocked, and we all start looking around and trying to see what he's talking about. Sure enough as the bus drives by, there is a dead body in the road, and yes a human body. He was a local man with no shoes, and there's no way he was hit by a car crossing the road. Due to the massive amount of construction going on EVERYWHERE, the roads are mostly fenced up real high so no one can cross it on foot. The only way for this guy to be there is if he came from the overpass onto the road, or if someone pushed him out of the car while they were driving down the road. There was blood everywhere and it was really quite graphic. The thing that struck me the most, was the fact that all the cars were just driving around like there was some trash in the road they didn't want to hit with their cars and just continuing on. It was only a traffic delay of 1 or 2 minutes. Tell me a dead body in the middle of the road in the states only caused a delay of a few minutes in traffic and I'll call you a crazy person. So we just drove on. After that tension in the bus was really high and some of us were considering going back to the ship. We didn't however, and continued driving through construction land. I swear this whole country is under construction.

We decided to hit the mall and do some shopping. We picked the biggest one we could find. Calling this place a mall is like calling North America an island. This place was massive. For those of you in Nashville, imagine Opry Mills. Double that, and then make it go up 4 floors. Then make the outside look like the Taj Majal but with no budget limits. That was this "mall". The "food court" was more of a megaplex of actual restaurants. It had the biggest and baddest movie theater I've ever seen. It had a bowling alley, an amusement park and an indoor ski slope. That's right, indoor skiing, like on ski's....with snow.....and a ski lift.....indoors.... We had lunch at TGI Fridays and our booth looked right out over the slopes. I got some cool pictures of that. It was crazy. (Oh yeah as a side note, I'm not a big drinker, but I like to drink now and then. They don't serve alcohol here. By here, I mean this country. You want alcohol, you buy it from a liquor store, which has armed guards out front and you have to have a special license to get in... All the drinks at TGI Fridays were non-alcoholic including the beer and margaritas. Anyway back to the mall..) Now think of every single major store / designer you can think of and give it the biggest store they could use to sell their stuff. Dolce and Gabbana, Kate Spade, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, Etc. That was the ground floor. Let's see what's on the first floor shall we? More restaurants and so many little stores it was unbelievable. We spent the entire day in this one mall, we did everything in that one place. Also worth noting, is that out of all the ports I've hit and all the places I've seen, Dubai has the most gorgeous women ever. I mean it's ridiculous. Next time instead of a collared shirt I'm just going to tie a bib around my neck and hope for the best cause, uh, wow. Wasn't expecting that. It was also the most diverse group of people I've seen.
In other countries, it's mostly local people with a good mix of others.
Japan was the most diverse until now. It was much more Americanized that I expected as well, lots of British and Swedish people here. Dunno why Swedish, but there were. We found a "grocery store" and by grocery store of course I mean household goods spread across an area equivalent to the surface of the planet Jupiter. They had little stands at the ends of some of the aisles giving away samples. Well there was this one stand that was more of a permanent addition, and they were giving away Swiss Chocolate, the people behind the counter were actually Swiss, like, they came from Switzerland with their chocolate to sell in this mall. I had 6 samples and proposed marriage to the woman working the counter before my friends dragged me away. This place is loaded. The entire mall was marble inside from floor to ceiling, there were fountains everywhere with water dances and lighting all the time, fire bursting up through the water in time with music. These people can shop.

After it started getting late, we noticed an influx of what we called "the turban people" and so we felt very outnumbered. So we left a little earlier than we planned and came back to the ship. I didn't buy as much stuff as I wanted to, mainly because I can't manufacture pure gold from the oils in my skin and so couldn't afford hardly anything I wanted. I did manage to get my nephew a birthday present tho! So we left and came back to base, otherwise known as "the sandbox". There are a few vendors inside the sandbox, and we had DJ Scribble fly in from New York and DJ for us all night, so we danced and drank the only alcohol in the country until early in the morning, then came back to the ship and slept in the AC. The next day and a half I was on security detail, and let me tell you again about the heat. Full cami uniforms with sleeves rolled down around the wrists, full flak jacket and carrying a 9mm and an
M16 all day you get hot. I have a new respect for our Marines out here who carry more gear than we do and who actually work here day in and day out and don't get to pull out after a 4 day port call. It's amazing.
We had a bunch of Marines on base helping us with our security detail and they are all awesome, it was humbling working with them. Quite a group of men and women we have serving over here. I was proud to be working with them. So over the next day and a half for this port I broke up a few fights, one big fight and arrested a few people. It was a pretty busy port, people get a little wild when we don't hit a port for awhile, and this was no exception.

Well that's all for now, headed off to my next destination on our way back to the states. It's been a long deployment and I'm ready for it to wrap up.

-Wilson

Korea

Korea. Kinda cool actually, was expecting something much worse. We pulled into Busan and when I took the bus out in town the culture difference was immediately apparent. They drive on the same side of the road as us, but the streets are laid out really different and they are really narrow. They had these awesome rock formations with bonsai like trees planted all in the rocks along the side of the road. It was really cool I wish I took some pics of that. The construction workers all wore these massive face shields and just the way they dressed was so different, it was just really neat to be there and looking at all the stuff that was different.

Once we got off the bus and started walking around I was struck quickly by the smell of the place. It really stinks in Korea, I mean like you just dove into a dumpster behind Applebee's after a hot weekend of sitting there full. It wasn't that bad in places, it was real bad in others and it was pretty much always there if you were outside. That was the worst part. There was a lot of shopping. And when I say there was a lot of shopping, I mean it like if I were to say there is a lot of water in the ocean, or a lot of sand on the beach. Cause dang the shopping. But what was weird, is that is was like the same 10 stores repeated over and over. This extended even to the hundreds of street vendors. Let me tell you what you can buy, in plenty, in Korea. There was the watches/sunglasses guy, there was the ball cap/t-shirt guy, the guy with a million purses, the leather jackets guy, the jewelry guy, there was the shoes guy (shoes EVERYWHERE), the weird cd/cassette guy, the cheap souvenirs guy, and then 3 different food vendors. You have the squid/seafood guy, the chicken on a stick guy and the "omg is that seriously food" guy. There were plenty of actual stores you could visit, but there were hundreds upon hundreds of street vendors with carts selling the same exact stuff. The one thing I hated about shopping in Korea was the sales people. If any of you are familiar with the "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy" skit from SNL, it reminds me of one of those. And I quote: "Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someones neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to
laugh, because what is that thing."

I now know the answer, that thing is the sales person from Korea. To give you an example I went up to a stand outside of one of the cheap souvenirs guy's stores because they had some cheap jump drives hanging there. I was looking at one that was 16GB, and this guy literally ran
out from behind his counter, ran all the way around the aisle, bolted out the front door and glued the tip of his index finger under big red circle on the package that said 16GB and said, "16gigs!" and then just stood there. I had to laugh cause dang dude I can read the thing, catch your breath for a sec and get some water or something. You can't go into a store without 5 salespeople following you and pointing out the obvious and clinging to you like suckerfish. I walked up to a cart selling hats and the lady kept trying to show them to me and pick them up for me and was so in the way of me actually trying one on that the hats finally fell onto the ground. I picked them up and put them back for her and just walked away, which of course immediately reduced the
price of the item by 75%. That was the cool thing about shopping here, every price is debatable. The jump drive for example was marked at 67,000won which is about 70bucks. All I had to do was express interest, and then mosey away like I was just going to leave and he dropped it to
60bucks. After haggling back and forth for awhile, I got the 16gb jump drive for 52dollars american. Pretty good price, it works great too. Oh and it was made in Korea, which he made sure I understood.

I have been pretty adventurous in these different countries as far as eating things that do NOT look like human food. Korea is supposed to be famous for it's BBQ. So I was all about trying this. They cook it in the table in front of you, but it was so stupid. This guy just brought out a few strips of meat and slapped them on the little grill with no seasonings whatsoever and browned the meat and cut it with scissors and gave up the pieces. It was really disappointing, and there were these little bowls of stuff all over the table, I took a pic of the spread. It was weird. We went to McDonalds later, and I had my first Shrimp Burger. It was weird, but decent. The best, and I mean the BEST food I had was a dessert called Bingsu. Let me tell you about this little chunk of amazing. They fill a bowl with shaved ice, then pour a sweet cream over the ice. Then a layer of fruit (I had watermelon) chopped into small pieces and then a tall serving of the most deliscious soft serve ice cream I've ever had in my life. It wasn't even like ice cream, it was like cool whip turned into a sweet frozen cream. I couldn't get over how amazing this thing was. I took a picture of it too, I'll have some pics up soon.

Anyway that's about it for my trip to Korea. Took the subway around, walked the streets, spent my time just being a silly foreigner. Next stop Japan!

Wilson

Guam

Guam. So let me tell you about Guam. The island is gorgeous, with the exception of the places where humans have settled. It's like someone dropped a run down, backwater, redneck community in the middle of a plush island resort. But wait there's more. Also, whoever this is, decided to cut out a section of Rodeo drive from Beverly Hills and plant that in the middle of the backwater redneck town. It's like this. From the base we got onto the bus that goes to "town". We drive out into this plush, humid resort island and I'm thinkin "this is gonna be awesome". Then we start seeing buildings. Some trailers, some dirty businesses. Ok strip clubs, interesting, more strip clubs, some bars....ooook a porno shop, a boarded up "mike's gun shop", then a Louis Vuitton, a Rolex Store, Chanel, Gucci, then oh wait, another porn shop, a gun shop not boarded up, a planet hollywood restaraunt..... And on and on. It was really weird. It rains a lot, but the temperature doesn't drop like a normal place on earth. It just turns into a steam bath and you sweat like the pilot in Airplane at the end when he's trying to land. It's ridiculous. I had a few drinks at TGI Fridays, walked around with some buddies and bought some post cards and souveniers and that's pretty much it. I wasn't able to take a tour of the island, otherwise I'd have more to report. SO to those of you who will be receiving my post cards, will be seeing better parts of the island than I did! It wasn't all that bad I suppose, was cool just being there really, kinda surreal for me still to go all these far off places. We've left Guam and are heading to our next destination, where as I will send a new report pronto! Love you and miss you all!

Wilson

Hong Kong

My visit to hong kong. It was hot, crowded, vertical, cheaply confusing and short.
Hot - Holy cow the humidity here is crazy. I had a 12hour a-gunner watch on the flight deck on the 2nd day in port (why yes the flight deck is made of solid steel and has no protection from the sun). I was dumping water on my head pretty much all the time. Had a pair of binoculars watching boats in the water and making sure they had authorization to come within a certian radius of the ship. Had a 240 machine gun mounted next to me in case they didn't. In the city was much better, but was still extremely hot.
Crowded - Ok there are tons of people here. The roads are narrow and the cars drive on the wrong side of the road, and go FAST. It's amazing people don't die by the thousands everyday just from being plowed by vehicles. It was wierd being the minority in such a crowd, that was a unique experience and it was rather neat.
Verical - So Hong Kong is pretty much claimed on every square inch. Everything has been built on from coast to coast (yes Hong Kong is an island). So what does that mean? Well that means there is no room for expansion, except for up. And up they go, the skyline is nothing but buildings the size of the Sears Tower back home and higher. It's crazy. All the shops lined up allong the streets are about the size of a public restroom at your local Outback Steakhouse, but there are shops back to back to back to back for ever and ever. The city is also rather dirty and crammed together. I remember we cut through a back alley that was extremely, extermely poor, and then coming out of the alley on the other side into Plaza Towers Square with the nicest buildings i've ever seen. The contrast all around you is really odd.
Cheaply Confusing - I never got used to the money. The converstion rate is 1 to 7.75 which means 1000 Hong Kong dollars is 128 bucks american. It was wierd having 10dollar coins, and paying for one beer with a 20dollar bill and getting no change. That was another thing, no taxes added on to sticker price. If a candy bar says 5dollars on the shelf, you give the cashier a 5dollar coin. Easy peasy. Everything is up for barter, don't want to pay 300 Hong Kong dollars for those binoculars, just walk away and listen to the price drop then haggle. It's amazing how cheap you can get things here, but I just never got a feel for how much I was actually spending without constantly looking at a conversion chart.
Short - *sigh* SO because i'm in security, I worked the first 2 days in port, which meant I had the 3rd and 4th day off. Well the 3rd day was awesome. The 4th day I never got to leave the ship. They secured liberty and put out a recall. We got underway that afternoon early because of an incoming typhoon, so I only got one day. I had planned on using my 2nd day for buying gifts for everyone and post cards and what not, so I didn't manage to get a single thing for anyone. I was SO bummed I couldn't believe it. They had some really cool stuff there, and I just didn't have the room to get stuff the first day out. MAN i still can't believe it. Oh well, i'll be back eventually i'm sure.
That's about it for my report from hong kong for now. I took plenty of pictures, and will make them available as soon as I can manage it. Much love from China.
TKW

ugh

Allow me to complain a little.
well since we are going overseas, we have to make sure that all out missile launchers are fully loaded and ready to fire. Who loads the missiles into the launhcers you asK. Well, that's my division of course. We own all of the ships self defense systems. But i'm getting ahead of myself.
About a week ago, everyone had to be innoculated with the smallpox vaccine. It is a wonderfully painful series of about 15 consecutive punctures, much like a slow tattoo. It hurt, but wasn't all that bad. After about a week, a nice large smallpox blister appears on the skin, stays there for awhile, slowly dries and then falls off, leaving a permanent scar. Well it's been about a week now, and the lymph node in my armpit on that arm has swollen and hurts quite a bit. This is normal, but it really is quite an annoying place for pain, especially when combined with the large blister on my arm that itches like mad and can't be touched lest I spread smallpox all over my body. While dealing with that, yesterday I had to get my 2nd anthrax shot in a series of 3 on my other arm. That shot is really no big deal but it does burn brightly from time to time seemingly at random times. Also yesterday was the first day of missile loading on my system. I was handling missiles all day, and after we were finished, I stressed my back quite thoroughly. So, while lying in my rack last night, I was in complete misery let me tell you. A throbbing, itching smallpox blister on one shoulder with a swollen and painful armpit, a burning athrax wound on the other shoulder and muscle spasms deep in my back twisting pain through my spine everytime I moved even a little. My back still hurts a lot today. I love the NAVY!
well sheesh Wilson life sucks! ohhh not really there's good stuff too. It was a gorgeous day yesterday and it was good work on the flightdeck of this massive carrier cutting through the ocean and I got some great pictures of the day's work. I'll be sure to upload them here when I can. We are in more tropical waters now as the temp of the ocean here is close to 75degrees. It's really cool how the water changes colors dependsing on where we sail. The other day I saw a school of flying fish off my deck the other day. We were doing radar maintenance and one of my friends pointed them out. They were about the size of small cats, and there were about 30 of them. They all just come out of the water all at the same time and glide like one animal allong the surface of the water for a pretty good distance before all diving back in and repetaing. it was really cool.
That's all from Wilson for now, gotta get back to the deckplates. Love to all.

1st post

Well it took the military to do it, but I guess now i'm officially a blogger. We are headed to Hawaii as i write this, and you all would not believe how blue the water is out here. Now I know why they call it Navy Blue. We are about a week into my first 6month deployment and so far so good. With my system, once we get underway the maintenance we do goes down dramtically. Mostly because of flight ops, we can't do a lot of the stuff we do in port cause of all da bad boy planes taking off and landing all day long. So our schedule right now is pretty light. Molly set this blog up for me on a free thing I guess, so it looks like til I can get one installed on my site, these advertisments are gonna be hanging around fmo time to time. I'll get that cleared up soon :) Check back here now and again, i'll try to update this as much as I can. Internet hours are limited on the ship, and aren't always predictable. love you all!