Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Please see video greeting linked below.

Kraynak Christmas Greeting 2010


Peace on Earth

Until Every One Comes Home

Until Every One Comes Home

That’s the slogan for the United Service Organization, which is more familiarly known by its acronym, USO. Established by President Roosevelt in 1941, the USO provides morale and welfare support to U.S. troops and their families, around the world. The nonprofit organization is congressionally chartered and relies on the generosity of individuals, organizations and corporations to support its activities.

At my location, the USO is known for their phones and internet. We have a USO tent, referred to as a “USO in a Box” that includes over a dozen phones and wireless internet. The phones are free to use. You simply sit down, dial 1 plus the area code, and just like in the states the phone starts ringing on the other end. If no one is waiting to use a phone, then talk all you want. Otherwise, they ask you to limit your calls to 30 minutes. A conventional American cell phone would charge about $4 a minute. A local cell phone would charge about 25-cents a minute. Either way, it adds up, and having free phone use 24/7 is a great amenity.

The USO tent also provides free wireless internet, and has a few desks where one can park themselves and surf the web, or Skype. The bandwidth and USO tent can get crowded in the evenings, so as long as the locals aren’t burning tires to heat their homes, you can sit outside as well and still get wireless internet.

Technology has changed the way we live, even in some of the most remote places on earth. Providing internet access to troops is something the USO recognized it needed to keep up with in order to remain relevant as an organization. But there is one thing the USO has done for almost 70 years that is still as valid today as it was in 1941.  USO Tours.

Most of us remember seeing Bob Hope on TV entertaining a crowd of troops in some far off place. That tradition continues. Yesterday (Friday Dec. 17) the USO Tour paid us a visit, with a pretty big star - Robin Williams. It was his fifth tour with the USO.

Besides Robin Williams, comedian Lewis Black (one of my favorites), singer Kix Brooks (Brooks & Dunn), country music songwriter Bob Dipiero (who I discovered after the fact was born in Youngstown), comedian Kathleen Madigan, and cyclist Lance Armstrong also were in attendance. Their visit was brief (perhaps 2 hours) but considering there’s not much else on the compound besides the USO tent, it was a welcome reprieve from a normal Friday.

Williams, Madigan, Black, Brooks, Depiero and Armstrong with the 2-Star General

Robin Williams entertaining us.

After some introductions by our 2-Star General, Robin Williams took the stage for a bit. Some of his funny one-liners (that I edited for language):

“So they told us to turn our watches back 30 minutes when we land in Kabul. What? Are you kidding? You need to turn your clocks back 200 years when you’re here!”

“I’ve inhaled so must dust here the past day I crapped an adobe brick.”

“This place is far out there, when we landed, the voice on my GPS said, ‘whoa, where the f&*$ are we?”

Same time as previous pic from a different angle. Camera magic.

I’ve loaded a 30 second, un-edited clip, of his performance to my YouTube channel. Don’t view it if easily offended by profanity.


MichaelJKraynak You Tube Channel

After a 10 minute performance the stars moved into the dining hall where they lined us all up for an assembly line of photos.

Robin holding court with me and my friends.

It was quick, it was funny, and it was nice. The stars donate their time to do this. The USO pays for transportation, lodging, logistics, etc. They’ve done it for 70 years and will continue to do so Until Every One Comes Home.

It's Quite Bazaar

Besides work, we have few things on base to keep us occupied.  There are no coffee shops to go for a break. There is a semi trailer that acts as our post exchange (store) and has a limited offering.  One can get a little antsy and the walls and barbed wire meant to keep bad guys out, feel like they are closing you in. And that’s why Sunday’s are an exciting day.

The local bazaar comes onto the base each Sunday. It’s the same vendors from week to week and just like flea markets in the states, sometimes you can find a great deal, and sometime you can find junk. But it’s a distraction from the everyday rut.

My favorite merchant.

From original Afghan rugs, to old weapons from the day of British rule, to bootleg DVD’s and knock-off colognes and perfumes, if you have a few dollars; there is something to be sold.  Some of the stuff looks very old, as if it were dug up from a cave when they were searching for Bin Laden, but then we hear stories of a factory in Kabul making things that look really old. So you really never know how authentic the article is.

Blankets, scarves, and hats.

A couple of months ago, the bazaar switched from taking U.S. currency to only taking Afghanis - the national currency of Afghanistan. The exchange rate is pretty outrageous. One U.S. dollar equals about 45 Afghani. In other words, one thousand Afghani is about $22. It can get confusing as I personally experienced.

There was a particular item that a co-worker of mine said he purchased for $10. I wanted one of those items as well. Now typically, you ask how much the item is. The merchant will give you some outrageous price to which you respond:

“O, qemat ast!”, which means, wow, that’s expensive! Then you add,

“Arzanesh ko.” Make it cheaper. To which he asks how much you want to pay and you lowball him, I mean really low ball him. Then you go back and forth a few times before he says:

Vases, bowls, chess sets carved from granite and marble.

“For you my friend, I make special deal.” And pretty much gives you a reasonable price, a “special deal” that he has given to everyone else that day.

The process can be fun if you like to haggle. But after a while, I just want to know how much it is before determining if I even want it, so the haggling becomes a time consuming hassle.

So for this item I wanted to buy, I decided I would change my strategy and walk straight to the vendor and state my one and only low-ball price, anticipating he would come back higher and I would simply walk away.  Knowing others had purchased it for $10; I wanted to get it cheaper. I walked straight to the item, picked it up, and when the vendor approached I simply said: “800 Afghani”. He grabbed the item, said OK, and put it in a bag. I paid him and walked away very proud of my stellar negotiation skills. It wasn’t until later that day when I began to brag about my purchase that I realized why the vendor accepted my offer so quickly. In my mind, I wanted to pay $8 instead of $10. So I offered 800 Afghani. Well, 800 Afghani is over $16. I’m sure the vendor that evening was bragging to his colleagues how he was able to get an extra $6 from an American with no effort on his part.  

The best though, are the DVD’s. If a movie premiers in a U.S. theater on Friday night, I can buy the DVD on Sunday afternoon. The DVD does truly showcase the global economy in which we live. The last one I saw was a U.S. movie, with Spanish subtitles, burned on a cheap Chinese DVD, being sold to me in Afghanistan, two days after the movie premiers. But these are bootleg DVD’s, and sometimes not very good ones.

There was one movie in particular that caught my eye. It was called “Holy Rollers” and it was about ecstasy pills being smuggled into the U.S. by Hasidic Jews. I mean come on, that’s got to be a crazy movie. So I bought it for 100 Afghani (about $2). That week after work in my room, I popped the DVD into my computer. Up comes “Charlie St. Cloud.” What? These aren’t Hasidic Jews! This is freaking Zac Effron in a chick flick. Having nothing else to do, I started watching the movie. The bootleg quality was horrible.

When I say bootleg in this example, I mean someone went to the theater with a video camera, and filmed the screen. Just like the Seinfeld episode. Now I’ve seen a few of these where the videographer is actually quite good, but this was not one of them. First, the back of someone’s head was in the lower right corner of the screen the whole time. Second, the videographer sneezed at one point and the camera shot up the ceiling before being readjusted. And the person taking the video must have been sitting next to someone who loves candy because you could hear wrappers being opened several times.  I watched about 20 minutes, shut down the computer, and vowed to return the DVD the following Sunday.

So I brought the movie back the following week and told the vendors it was Charlie St. Cloud. He quickly took the DVD, apologized, and handed me a new “Holy Rollers” DVD. I put it in my computer and it’s the movie “Salt.” I gave up, watched “Salt,” enjoyed it, and gave up on ever seeing “Holy Rollers.”