Last Day of August

Well, I did Physical training today at Fort Belvoir. Some abs work out and then 4x400 meters. I did indeed get decent time of roughly 85 seconds consistently. Then went to the indoor swimming pool. The worst thing about that pool was that it was filled with old retired military personnel. And guess what? While I was swimming, a lifeguard advised everybody to get out of the pool because of a suspicious object on the bottom of the pool. It was a pile of poop. There is no such thing as there is a correlation between old people and "can not hold your turd". and I'm not insisting anything for that matter. It happens as in Forrest Gump movie when Forrest simply said, "It happens". Well that is all for your entertainment. Until next time.

Nothing Significant to Report

We had the paintball range at Bellows Air Force Base. It was good, but I get purple marks all over my body. It was a good day, well, not so good since the Los Angeles Lakers lost the game to Denver today and my wife just got angry with me again. We are 5 thousands miles apart and 5 hours apart as well. I don't know if things will get better but it is really suckie right now.
Well, tomorrow, I will be heading back to Los Angeles. Let's see how things are working out with me and the future but it does not seem bright at all.
Good night Zimmerman

Just another Ordinary Day with Beautiful Weather

Yes, all good things must come to an end but also all bad things must come to an end as well. Today I check out the website meetup.com and was able to sign up for a few group/organization include: All Things Oahu, Hikers and adventurers and Volunteer Honolulu. I must get involve in the community and discover other things besides work alone which might be a depressant in the long run and stress me out as well.

Work is wonderful. I belong to a great organization. All personnel are high speed with high moral. These people are smart yet humble. I belong to a high speed organization does not meet I’m high speed. Indeed, I’m far away high speed. But I must try my best to stay on top of things and hopefully won’t get burn out.

Tomorrow, we will head to Bellows for some tactical exercises. So, go figure. Where we work at, there are plenty of lands to train on, but we must go to a better place to train.

Next Wednesday, I will head to H5 Homeless Shelter to feed the Homeless people. I believe it will be a fascinating experience. I actually did this before in Santa Barbara, California; one of the richest city on Earth. Now, you go figure, too.

Life in Hawaii

As a single man. It is not as fun as you thought it would be. Hawaii is good for vacation (in this case you would travel as a couple or with the family, never by yourself). Nonetheless, Hawaii is blessed with extremely nice weather. I live in Mililani Mauka (the Mountain part), very close to work and the house is next to the park. At around 5:30 in the morning, thousands of bird would start chirping, sun rise, but my window face the South direction, so can’t really see the sun rise or sunset.
In the picture is the street leading to my house. I do not remember (memorize) the street name over here yet. May be it is hard to memorize as the name of streets are foreign to me or I’m just plainly ignorance.
I think Hawaii is over rated, but my job rocks. Well, this 4 day weekend, I will be visiting my family. June, will be D.C again, July will be the Big Island, and July head back to Los Angeles again, August D.C again. I think that is enough traveling for me. I really need to settle down now. But hey, you can’t complain. The life is yours to keep; you do whatever you wish with your life.

Life goes on

All good thing must come to an end. You can't be happy for the rest of your life. You are born, you grow up, you get sick and then you die. Along the way, there are many things that either slow down or speed up the process. How to live your life? It is a funny yet very serious question that hardly anybody know how to answer.

Choices: You have many choices, but choices lead to consequences. There is action and reaction. Pham, you think hard about this and don't screw up along the way. Be very careful. There are things you can change but there are things that you can't change. You need to distinguish between the two and find the equal equilibrium.

Sunday before Monday, May 18

Sunday-shine

Well, my car’s been alright so far. I took it to Church this morning (40 miles round trip), and it’s been alright. Clayton Kershaw threw 7 shutout innings, the Lakers advanced to the Western Conference Final against Denver Nuggets. Life indeed is great. I’m planning to go back to Los Angeles next 4 days weekend (Memorial Day). Who says it is a 4 day weekend? Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday and 30 free days vacation out of the year. Well, that is the way it is in the Army. The Army is funny most of the time. On the other side, you may be deployed, far away from your loved ones for 15 months (at least it is not straight, and you don’t have to pay tax (unpatriotic)).

Talking about upside and downside, if you continue to always think about your downside, you probably will have a very miserable life. 99% of the people say that life is unfair. It is like the wind, it starts from the west and head to the east but eventually it would have to return to its origin. The same thing goes with the Water Hydrological cycle as well. The water from the river keeps pouring to the Ocean, but the Ocean is never full. Nothing is fair and nothing is unfair, but if you look at the big picture, the poor man and the rich man all come to the same place, which is the graveyard.

Life is indeed very beautiful. God bless.

Kailua Beach

Wake up early in the morning. Drove the Jeep to Kailua Beach just to see why it is so popular. It is a beautiful beach, voted the Number 1 beach in the U.S. Shallow and clear water, relatively calm with almost no wave, children swimming by the shore. There were ought to be thousands of people over there today. While everybody was busied worrying about what kind of activity to enjoy and the first thing I observed was this homeless man sleeping on a bench outside of the Men’s bathroom. Such a beautiful place, so elevated but this man, homeless man probably doesn’t even care about the scenery. He was probably worrying about staying alive. It makes me wonder what it like is to be homeless. Well, at least I still have a car to sleep in.

Talking about car, I just bought a Ford Crown Victoria a few weeks ago and the vehicle’s intake manifold blew up on me. Ford made that thing out of plastic. I don’t know why they do that? To save some bucks? Well it cost me a fortune and the Economy of Hawaii just got a bit richer due to my unfortunate fate. I gambled with an old car (1997 with 154,000 miles), and I pay for the consequence of gamble. Or I'm just too dumb to buy such a ridiculously dumb car.

2nd stop of the day was Chinatown. I prefer this Chinatown than the Chinatown in Los Angeles because there are just so much fruits and vegetables to choose from. The produces are actually cheaper than the Commissary. I know where to go get my produces from now on. I wish I can upload some pictures, but I could not able to find the cable to upload the pictures. I probably left it at work.

Life is beautiful!

New Life

I have decided to continue with my blog. I know that there won’t be anybody around wasting their times to read these dumb posts, but I will start to write again anyway. One of the writing teachers back in the ancient day told the class to write journal every day in order to increase the creativity and improve the writing in terms of grammar and sentence structure.
Well, it has been a long time since I posted anything on this blog. This blog was designed for the families of Wardawgs Soldiers whom served in Operation Iraqi Freedom 07-09. I will keep this blog alive and one day when I won’t be able to move my legs and undependable, I will take a look back at the blog and read about the old memories.
Life is beautiful. Godspeed!

Posters cover Iraq's blast walls

BAGHDAD, Iraq — If any single image can capture Iraq's precarious position, suspended between dictatorship and democracy, it's the campaign posters that are pasted on towering concrete blast walls throughout Baghdad and in the provinces, reflecting the country's brutal past and its hopes for a different future.

A week before voters go to the polls to fill several hundred council seats in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, more than 14,400 candidates are jostling to make their pitches in an election that many Iraqis hope will distribute power more equitably. On campaign signs wallpapered throughout most of the country, office seekers are pledging to create jobs, stamp out violence and build a "modern" Iraq.

"The number of posters is extreme," said Mazin Fouad, 34, the owner of a bodega-style shop in central Baghdad. "You can see them here, there, everywhere."

The election Jan. 31 comes as Iraq struggles to take another step from dictatorship to something resembling democracy. U.S. officials hope the provincial vote can be touted as free and fair, though Iraqis consider government figures corrupt and self-serving.

Iraq has held elections in recent years, but they weren't like these.

There were legislative elections in 2005, two years after U.S. troops invaded the country and toppled Saddam Hussein, but voters could choose only from "closed lists" of political parties instead of voting for individual candidates. Sunni Muslim Arabs boycotted the vote, which
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left them feeling marginalized.

This time, voters will be able pick parties and tick off numbers that correlate with the candidates of their choices. U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki isn't seeking office because the election is for provincial seats, but his face is on posters promising construction and — this may sound familiar — change.

Iraqi politics still has its risks, though. In mid-December, Atwani said, gunmen fired at State of Law party members as they put up posters on the eastern edge of Baghdad. Nobody was wounded.

While Iraqis joke that the blast walls offer more space for campaign posters, improving security is a popular pitch.

"Sectarianism is a crime against honor," reads one poster for a Sunni candidate with the Movement of the Sons of Two Rivers, a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates, which have nourished the land since prehistory. The signs, pasted in succession like an Andy Warhol print, appeared in a mixed-sect neighborhood in central Baghdad.

So far, election-related violence hasn't been as bad as many had feared. Only two candidates have been killed: a Shiite Muslim from al-Maliki's party in the southern province of Babil and a Sunni candidate in Mosul, a northern city where Arab-Kurdish tensions still run high.

There have been other campaign problems, however.

At a recent news conference in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified 5.6-square-mile government compound in the heart of Baghdad, officials said they'd documented 180 campaign violations by 69 parties and candidates, ranging from premature campaigning to putting up posters in undesignated areas. Election officials said they issued fines.

Then there's the mudslinging.

Al Sharqiya, an Iraqi satellite-television channel that's critical of the Shiite-led government, played on fears of sectarian violence, referring to posters on Palestine Street of certain candidates as a party of killers. The fliers that blanket the walls there belong to The Independent Free Men movement, which has been endorsed by leaders in the movement led by militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

As fast as posters are put up, opponents rip them down.

Given the almost daily roadside bombs, it makes sense that the campaign trail treads lightly on the streets and uses television to get into Iraqis' living rooms, assuming that voters have their own generators.

"When there is electricity, we sometimes watch the ads," said Haider Naji, 29, a magazine editor. "The candidates have spent a lot on these ads."

Religious symbols are banned from posters, but the ads still sport recognizable faces, imagery and slogans. With the unemployment rate as high as 60 percent, many ads employ a populist bent.

"With you, with you" is the slogan of the Shiite-affiliated Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. It's a reference to siding with the masses, the implication being that rival parties do not.

On a sleek-looking Web site for the Iraqi Accord Front, a major Sunni bloc in parliament, a singer solicits support from his listeners.

"The eyes of people sleep and we keep vigilant," he sings above a snappy beat and a party name chorus. "With you, injustice will not befall us."

The reach of the political parties is evident in other ways, too.

A suit-wearing security officer affiliated with the Badr Organization, the Iranian-backed armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, scolded reporters Thursday for interviewing motorists about their views on candidates' campaign efforts. The neighborhood, he said, was "presidential" and therefore off-limits to the news media. After 10 minutes of back-and-forth and a threatened cell phone call to his superior, the officer relented.

Many Iraqis say they're wary of elections, believing they do little but allow politicians to deepen their pockets. Often in the same breath, however, they say that they want not just improved security, but also basic services such as electricity.

"We want more services, not just sidewalks," said Ahmed Abbas al-Alaq, 29, a linguist.

As for the campaigning, voters say the ubiquitous ads are hard to ignore. They also wonder whether the money spent on them could be better used.

"If they spent this money on orphans or widows, we would be better off," said Fouad, the shop owner. "Wouldn't it be more useful to take care of these families in need?"

By TRENTON DANIEL
McClatchy Newspapers

Meal with a sheik seals friendship

Reporter's Notebook By Travis J. Tritten, Stars and Stripes

Sheik Jassim Zeydon Khalef al-Dulaymi, background, hosts soldiers while an assistant carries a tray of chai tea on Dec. 29 in Taji, Iraq. Purchase reprint
Travis J. Tritten / S&S
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Brandon Tipton, of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, pilots a Chinook helicopter during a nighttime mission around Baghdad. Purchase reprint

TAJI, Iraq — The sheik’s reception room was the size of a banquet hall. Colorful rugs covered the floor and the ceiling was hung with ornate golden chandeliers. The walls were lined with stuffed couches and tables decorated with glass elephants.

Sheik Jassim Zeydon Khalef al-Dulaymi, dressed in the traditional Arab dishdashah robe and shumagg head scarf, greeted some of the U.S. soldiers with a kiss on each cheek. He is an important man in Taji, north of Baghdad, and everything about him says so.

Meeting with sheiks is still a key job for soldiers on the front lines in Iraq. On this day in early January, the sheik had prepared a special treat for members of the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division — a lunchtime meal of broiled fish.

Many soldiers relish the lunches of Iraqi delicacies, even though it often means days of digestive distress.

“We don’t consider you occupiers, we consider you friends, especially since the new security agreement was signed,” said the sheik, a reserved man with intense eyes, before servants brought out a large tray of food.

The giant fish had been split down the center, topped with onions and tomatoes and broiled until the top turned brown and crunchy. It had been caught in the ancient Euphrates River, he said.

Eating in typical Iraqi fashion, the soldiers dipped their fingers into the soft oily meat and piled the fish onto pita bread.

The sheik pointed out what is considered the tastiest part of the fish, an area of dark salty meat near the brain.

“We are now partners,” he told the soldiers.