All this and a free pilot's jacket too!
The new year is off to a running start! My new employers, God help them, said that my contract would start on the 8th of January. I thought that was cool, leaving me just enough time to get those chips nicely centred on both shoulders and all, like a truly well-balanced Yank.
I returned from a ski holiday to find some weird stuff on the PC including a visa application for someplace hot and dusty in a combination of Arabic and French. What to make of that?
Well, I got one of my tri-lingual children to help out in filling in the little spaces. Then I called the Embassy in Berlin, when someone answered! Once I told him in German that, no, I don't speak French (I didn't even bother asking about English) he told me to call back tomorrow. That must have been the janitor, then.
I am very relieved to see that forward planning with the new lot is about the way it was with the old. Now if they just have a bar full of rude misfits, even though I think this is a job with a proper company that has only airplanes and no helicopters, I should feel right at home.
So that should be me sorted, at least for a while. I hope you are all managing okay without me back in the Centre of Excellence. My thoughts are with you, hoping that you all keep your heads down to the maximum extent consistent with still not bumping into things.
I get a jacket with zip-off sleeves and a detachable fake fur collar as part of my uniform issue. How about that then? Is that 'tits' or what?
Is this something where you disassemble the jacket once the desert sun comes up? I have been informed by someone here that the temperature drops to single figures at night but during the day I think it gets pretty warm year-round.
There must be a Company SOP for this, I am sure. Written, no doubt, by a Kamerad. Stand by for a report on this! Meanwhile, have a safe and happy 2007. If you see an insurgency coming, turn and go the other way.