Woke up this morning feeling rather nauseous. I didnt think I had had that much to drink – only five G&Ts so I was a little worried that maybe it was something I ate. 🙁 I was actually sick pretty early so I had to pike on going out for skeet shooting this morning. Was looking forward to giving that a go as I’ve never been skeet shooting before. I doubt very much I’d be any good at it, as last time I fired a shotgun it felt like I was dislocating my shoulder and I had zero accuracy! But would have been fun. MD was uber hung over and, even with shaky hands and a headache, still managed to come in second – behind the Turkmenistani who place first.
Spent the rest of the day couching with MD watching movies with the projector, before getting dressed up to go out to dinner at the Quetta Club, which is pretty much based on a British gentleman’s club – it is quite the institution apparently – the photo is from 1889.. Women are allowed at the club, as are children, but I think they only reason for that is the way the women will self segregate themselves anyway. Getting us all down there was an excercise in itself – the Pakistanis can’t seem to organise themselves for shit! There was the security detail of five men armed with machine guns and then two mini buses for everyone else. We drove down in MD’s car so we could leave when we were tired of it. The Saudis had issued the dinner invitation to all the foreign allies (22 of them) and their wives and kids for dinner for no particular occasion I understand, but just because they can. The two Saudi students are apparently ‘filthy rich’ and so picking up the dinner tab for about 60 people isnt a big deal. And while I was again fortunate enough to avoid being sized up for possible purchase, one of the Saudis, Abdullah Aziz has the lecherous arrogant arab bit down pat. I am sure it doesn’t help that their wives are back in Saudi Arabia.
When we first arrived, I was reacquainted with a pile of people I had met at the Queen’s Birthday dinner (I’ve never had so many wet handshakes in my life as I have here… they’re not accustomed to shaking hands with women and so offer up the floppiest handshakes ever :S) and then watched on as the women all filed off to one sitting area and the men all to another seating area. I stayed with MD and The Boys and as such was the only woman sitting with about 25 men from various countries… I could have gone over to sit with the women, but most of them have hardly any English and I didnt relish the idea of having to tell them how much my husband earned and how many children I had so they could fit me into the social pecking order. It is apparenly extremely important for the women to know how much money you earn (and it isn’t rude to ask apparently) and how many sons you have so they can know if they are more important socially than you are!!! Absolute bullshit …. makes me shake my head … they even select their food from a seperate buffet than the men … naturally I ignored this convention too and lined up with the men 🙂
So the women are all squared away in their area, the men are likewise doing their Man Love Thursday impressions, and the children are fucking running amok! No one is watching them, no one is taking any notice of them at all. Dont know why I am surprised… they dont even supervise their children in the streets…. but somehow it seems wrong to see the toddlers trying to hold their own around playground equipment and much older kids.
Dinner was interesting our table consisted of UK Mjr Mark, US Mjr Dave, Canada Mjr Randy, Germany Mjr Martin, Mjr Dazzles and myself, and the Iranian Colonel Tabriz. Good company and interesting conversation. I heard some great stories about….
. the quality of hookers in the Sierra Leone…
. how casualties are considered ‘consumed’ in Pakistani miliary parlance…as in : “we will send in the 3rd Division and 70% of the Division will be consumed in the offensive” BTW – a plan that results in 70% casualties is considered a success here 😐
. how you can freeze paintball pellets to turn a paintball gun into a deadly weapon which has no rifling marks and is therefore useless to obtain ballistic forensic evidence from, making it a perfect assassination weapon 🙂
. bathroom dilemmas when you’re on ambush raids… it’s bad manners to ‘dump a load’ where your colleagues may be required to bunker down later! 😐 Ewww!!!
. how during an earthquake in northern Iran Christmas 2003, all the foreign aid agencies turned out on Christmas day to help find survivors etc, but how all the local muslims didnt assist in relief efforts and were all busy looting the dead.
I also learned all about the FLOPPYS which are basically ex-pats wherever you are or Fucking Lazy Overseas Persons…. and lots of other unique and slightly off kilter conversational tidbits! MD always did make the best Dinner Monkey!!! And I did get to tell US Dave what a Sepo was which was kinda fun 🙂 … MD and UK Mark have been calling him Sepo all year, and he’s pretty much answering to it at this point… but he had no idea that in Australian and UK rhyming slang, a Sepo is a septic tank rhyming with yank. Poor bugger 🙂
So after dinner and the bizarre paramilitary conversations we all absconded and MD drove us home – without security! :S I dont know. It’s a toss up as to whether or not the security detail makes you safer… or actually makes you more of a target! Shrug…