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Day 12 of 114
12 years ago
General
*blows the dust off his journal*
It hit me last night that I should use this thing more. I'm on deployment at the moment and, whilst there is Internet back at my room, there's no Internet in my lab and I've got a fair amount of time to kill between cases right now. I use that time to do a lot of thinking about stuff and this journal seems as good a place as any to record all that. As well as allowing more than 140 characters, it's slightly more relaxed than my Twitter account; posts on there are copied to my Facebook and my family, so I can't be quite as relaxed as I can be here.
So yeah, there may be quite a few long, rambling journal posts coming along, and maybe some photos around camp. I'd like to try and capture a little of what life is like out here, within the restrictions of security - for example there won't be any photos of my workplace out here, unless I can get them cleared for release.
I've been here a week and a half so far and it feels like I never left. The lab is pretty much how I left it, but the accommodation has moved to a different camp. It's not too bad, but it's older so everything is a lot more worn and only half the showers have hot water. That's not so much of a problem now as it's still really hot during the day, but later in the year those hot showers are going to be needed. It can drop below freezing during the winter, which isn't that surprising considering that we're 800m above sea level.
I'm getting fed up with everything being beige; a lot of the equipment is beige, the tent's beige, the ground is beige and the dust that covers everything is also beige. There are small pockets of green on camp outside the laundry tents or where there's been a long standing water leak, but otherwise everything is beige. When I get back I will have to do some serious walking just to remember what fields and trees look like!
Yesterday I bought an Ikea PS wardrobe to go in my pit (local parlance for a 2.25M x 2.25M personal sleeping area in a tent, shielded on three sides with curtains). It's made my personal admin a lot neater, but mostly it's helped me feel like I own the space. In the process of moving my clothes I also found my Zippo lighter that I lost last week, so double win there.
The bed in my pit isn't great, sadly. It's a really basic camp bed with a foam mattress on top. I'm worried that the mattress may have fleas or bed bugs in it as I keep getting bitten in the middle of the night. Originally I thought it could be mosquitos, but no-one else in the tent is getting bitten.
Work itself is pretty quiet. My duties have been split roughly 50/50 forensics and lab administration to keep me busy. I struggled with the admin side initially, but now I have it pretty well licked. There's a little uncertainty about getting to the post office every day next month due to a shortage in vehicles, but my line manager has mentioned getting us trained to ride quad bikes as we've got access to a few of those. That will certainly be a more interesting way to get there! If all else fails, we always have the bicycles; they're fine for small amounts of stuff, but carrying several big diplomatic sacks is totally out of the question.
This is pretty tl;dr already, so I'll leave it here for now. More tomorrow hopefully. ^.^
Love you all,
~Tryst
It hit me last night that I should use this thing more. I'm on deployment at the moment and, whilst there is Internet back at my room, there's no Internet in my lab and I've got a fair amount of time to kill between cases right now. I use that time to do a lot of thinking about stuff and this journal seems as good a place as any to record all that. As well as allowing more than 140 characters, it's slightly more relaxed than my Twitter account; posts on there are copied to my Facebook and my family, so I can't be quite as relaxed as I can be here.
So yeah, there may be quite a few long, rambling journal posts coming along, and maybe some photos around camp. I'd like to try and capture a little of what life is like out here, within the restrictions of security - for example there won't be any photos of my workplace out here, unless I can get them cleared for release.
I've been here a week and a half so far and it feels like I never left. The lab is pretty much how I left it, but the accommodation has moved to a different camp. It's not too bad, but it's older so everything is a lot more worn and only half the showers have hot water. That's not so much of a problem now as it's still really hot during the day, but later in the year those hot showers are going to be needed. It can drop below freezing during the winter, which isn't that surprising considering that we're 800m above sea level.
I'm getting fed up with everything being beige; a lot of the equipment is beige, the tent's beige, the ground is beige and the dust that covers everything is also beige. There are small pockets of green on camp outside the laundry tents or where there's been a long standing water leak, but otherwise everything is beige. When I get back I will have to do some serious walking just to remember what fields and trees look like!
Yesterday I bought an Ikea PS wardrobe to go in my pit (local parlance for a 2.25M x 2.25M personal sleeping area in a tent, shielded on three sides with curtains). It's made my personal admin a lot neater, but mostly it's helped me feel like I own the space. In the process of moving my clothes I also found my Zippo lighter that I lost last week, so double win there.
The bed in my pit isn't great, sadly. It's a really basic camp bed with a foam mattress on top. I'm worried that the mattress may have fleas or bed bugs in it as I keep getting bitten in the middle of the night. Originally I thought it could be mosquitos, but no-one else in the tent is getting bitten.
Work itself is pretty quiet. My duties have been split roughly 50/50 forensics and lab administration to keep me busy. I struggled with the admin side initially, but now I have it pretty well licked. There's a little uncertainty about getting to the post office every day next month due to a shortage in vehicles, but my line manager has mentioned getting us trained to ride quad bikes as we've got access to a few of those. That will certainly be a more interesting way to get there! If all else fails, we always have the bicycles; they're fine for small amounts of stuff, but carrying several big diplomatic sacks is totally out of the question.
This is pretty tl;dr already, so I'll leave it here for now. More tomorrow hopefully. ^.^
Love you all,
~Tryst
