Commander's Conference

I've usually posted something in this blog each and every day that I've been in theatre. In fact, I don't think that I've missed out on a single day. Sometimes I've admittedly written a post one or two days afterwards, but changed the the post date and time accordingly. But today I think that I'll do an exception, and write one post that covers two days. I'll do so for no other than because the two past days were quite alike, except that things happened in different order. That, and because I'm tired. I'm not saying that there has been days that havent resembled other days here before, on the contrary, nor that I haven't been this tired before, but you get the picture.

So yesterday, after a cold breakfast (because our cook T was driving the other car and couldn't stay to clean up the kitchen), we left for CNL. The purpose was for me to attend the commander's conference, and for the others to run some errands, and then return back to Aybak. It started as planned, but thing soon changed as usual. The transport that I was planning to take back to Aybak left early and the conference continued until noon today, so the only altenative was that the team that drove me to CNL would stay there and wait until the conference was over. Later that turned out to be a good thing, because Lion needed some repairs anyway. During the conference's breaks I literally ran around the camp, attending to various business. I revised the cash, collected some archive paper and memorial shields for the Swedes, and signed my application for a second rotation, until 12 August 2010. The conference lasted to about 2000, and after that I slept, again in bunk 14 of tent 3-4.

This morning the conference continued at 0800 and went on for what felt like forever. After lunch it was time to climb back up in the front seat of Lion and drive back to the PO. The weather was beautiful and the traffic light. We tried a different route through MeS, which turned out to be fine, and that also saved us a lot of time. Upon coming back to home base, I took care of some business with J of G9 and P of G2 (the G's are different departments of PRT staff), who had arrived with the early morning transport. We had one briefing with almost everyone, including the IP's, one with everyone except the IP's, and one with just the leaders and others who write reports. We had brought back some "Suomi-food" from CNL, so of course the guys wanted to wrap up the evening with grilled "Camping" sausages and "Prepared Mustard" from Turku. It was good, actually, for a change.

I heard that the guards have started calling the puppy "Isaf". So now its name is Isaf, despite the fact that it might show disrespect towards the operation. I wonder if someone brought some sausage to Isaf? They must have, the way they are spoiling her.