EPTWhen I got the notification I was going to Kuwait, several reactions occured inside me.
Firstly, I was irritated. I didn't sign up in a deployment heavy job, but now I got stuck with arguably the most deployment heavy job in the Air Force. I knew it was coming, I didn't have to like it.
Second was fear. Anyone can tell you about how harsh deployments potentially could be, both physically and mentally. That's all the news reports anyways, how harsh it is over there. At the time, I wasn't sure where I was going. I had heard of Kuwait before, but I had no idea what it was like in comparison to Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran. Hell, outside of it being in the Middle East, I didn't even know where it was.
Lastly was sadness. Moreso than normal, I was sad.
A lot of it was probably due to the drama that was going on in my guild at the time. Chikyu, myself and Loracaryn were struggling to keep Snowfruit and Shuukuen from splitting off of the guild from Sunsun and Snorlax's control. They kept delaying our progress, and it was not boding well for the future.
I also didn't want to leave. I hated change, I still do today. I do not like changes in environments because it means a month or 2 of adjustment before I can fall into routine. Ambiguity of what I was going to do over there was also bearing down on me. I had heard multiple things, from it'll be a cakewalk deployment, to it's a pain in the ass.
In the end, I decided to figure it out for myself.
More outprocessing and paperwork was done. Sometime mid January, we headed out to Texas (yet again) for predeployment training.
The team I went with, I'm friends with most of them today. A few of them were off of my flight from work, so I already knew that, but for the most part, it was people that were around work, I just never talked to. Within a couple weeks, we all integrated into something that resembled a team. Yes, we were rag tag, yes, some of us had no idea what was going on, but we were able to get shit done, and that's all that mattered.
When we got to Texas, the first thing I was reminded of was the humidity. It was hot as balls, but if you live in Texas, you know that changes fast as hell. We got on a bus and drove for a bit down to some backwater establishment.
Everything was run down and overgrown. I could barely believe this qualified as a training zone, but there we were. It was next to a prison. It had a community center down the road which was the only place to get internet. I rarely went, training was sufficient enough to keep me damned tired.
My mom visited me again during the training. I remembered there were no gate guards coming in, so it was more or less a community thing. I told her this, and she jumped at the chance to come see me. I gave her the address to the community center, and went off to see her. It was a nice reprieve from the hecticness of the military. That my mom would be a constant in my life, and that wouldn't change anytime soon.
Training went on and on, getting in trouble for someone doing stupid shit, waking up at silly early hours, and finding out the bipolarness of Texas weather. It was freezing in the morning and hot as hell after a couple hours. It was truly a hard decision to make as to whether you'll bring cold weather gear or not in the morning.
On the last night before our training ends, I get a phone call. It was early February, about 1-2 in the morning. I had to wake up at about 5-6. The call was from my dad. He was wishing me a Happy Chinese New Years Eve, and apparently he was in front of my base in Tucson, asking if he could come on to see me.
I admit, I do not get along with my dad. If you read the inference above correctly, I had even told him I was deploying. Regardless, I went off on him. The dorm is setup more like cubicles than dorms. There were 2 bunk beds per pod, 3 people to a pod, so someone got a bunk bed to themselves. But because there's no solid wall to block sound from the other pods, I woke up people 3-4 pods down yelling at my dad for calling me at a retarded hour of the day. Not to mention it was not Chinese New Year at the time, nor Chinese New Year Eve. It was like the night before it or something.
The next day, people were laughing and joking about the event. It is now a recurring joke to wish me a "Happy Chinese New Year". I was also given a nickname from my team leader. Angry China Man. This name has stuck for well over a year, I probably won't get rid of it at this point.
After that day was done and over with, we were done with training. However, our flight to Kuwait would not depart for another week or so, so we needed a place to stay for that time frame. We ended up staying at a nearby Naval Station. It wasn't anything special. The instructors happened to know about it, since they lived in the area. The rest of the team spent the weekend partying downtown with our instructors. I stayed back primarily to watch weapons (we had to take our own weapons to Kuwait), and simply because that's not my type of scene. I tried to play a bit of WoW to grind seasonal achievements (I was an achievement whore), but I had already missed Valentines Day, and felt unmotivated. It was only compounded by the shitty internet connection. I spent more time watching TV than online. It was kinda sad.
My mom came to visit yet again. I was relieved. It was the last time I'd see her before I came back from the deployment. We went to eat, while I went to deal with some Social Security stuff. I got it done, and had a pretty decent day.
Onto the deployment. After a week, we were on our way to the airport to fly out. I wasn't really enthusiastic about it, but it had to happen. We flew out of Virginia somewhere around mid February.
The weather was obviously hot. When we got there, there were a couple of pit stops, notably in Ireland. We were reminded that this was probably our last chance to drink (legally) before we came back, and I watched the blitz down to the bar. There was an Irishman who informed us
"I know how you Americans get with alcohol, so we're restricting it to 2 beers per person!"
Firstly, he's Irish, I think he's the last person to tell us how bad people get with alcohol. Secondly, the 2 beers a person didn't happen.
We also landed in Germany, but didn't get out. After a few more hours, we landed in Kuwait. A bus trip later, we were on the base. More inprocessing and moving into dorms.
The dorms wasn't necessarily terrible. It was built up, and it wasn't a tent. I didn't have internet, but it was accessible, if you were willing to pay. Things were fairly close to each other, and it was easy to access stuff. Work and food was probably around 5-10 minutes away.
I won't really go into too many details about the job. This video actually is pretty much the majority of what I did.
The exception is I didn't work out. I also drove around in Humvees and worked towers. I also don't really care too much about working out, I was more concerned with WoW.
While I was there, Ulduar was released. I remember it fondly, as more exploits were discovered off this one raid alone.
I was there when people found out about the Mage soloing the Military Quarter of Naxxramas, and I was there when we saw the 2 person Flame Leviathan down. It was impressive, but I never had a friend that cared enough to do it.
Due to extreme lag, I avoided raiding. I tried anyways, and I eventually found a place that had decent lag at certain hours. It was nice. All the while that Ulduar was being cleared by us, Snorlax's attendence had not improved.
We had all talked to him at one point or another and he simply got defensive about his lack of commitment to the guild. I was aware that he had a girlfriend, good for him, but he was literally on for about 10 minutes, went afk, then logged off. Every week.
When we finally got to Yogg Saron, even Sunsun, who was losing faith in the guild, was starting to see some sort of light. Deathise had left the guild in favor of PvP, and we were picking up people here and there, mostly close friends. However, we would only attempt Yogg once, and wiped horribly on Phase 1.
All the while this was happening, I was leveling alts. I had reached the point that I wasn't doing much on my main, and I wanted a change of pace. My Death Knight eventually reached 80, and soon after, my Hunter. I worked odd hours, and everyone was in college. I understood that, I had to do stuff on my own. Most of my days off were spent leveling alts and doing dailies.
For the majority of the deployment, I was riding the depression train. When I got there, I promoted, but this was dampered on by the fact that the rank I put on is more or less given to you for being in long enough. I "celebrated" my 21st birthday in a country I was not allowed to drink in. I was also working the busiest gate on the installation that day. By myself. Even more, General Order No. 1 was in effect. I could not watch porn and fap it away. Leadership was constantly changing rules and it was hard as hell to keep up. I wasn't getting in trouble over there, but one of my roommates was a different story (we were roomed 3 to a room). I got in trouble because I was a higher rank. I was blamed for "not taking care of my fellow airmen". It wasn't just at work, but I shared my bathroom with a sergeant, who would blame me for a constantly messy bathroom (we shared repurcussions if our bathroom was dirty during an inspection). I knew it was my roommate, but in the military, you don't give excuses, you give results.
So I cleaned the bathroom every day. I was slowly falling further into depression. I had even had to go see the Psychologist while I was there for showing depressive symptoms. To make it worse, I lost sight of why I would want to go home. There was nothing different there. I would live the same life regardless of where I was. It was just hotter in Kuwait, and never rained. Whatever, I claimed, nothing really mattered.
But a few things changed it around.
We were allowed iPods with us. I was blown away. I also realized that my iPod had a grand total of 50ish songs. I know a lot of you are like this, you download the single song you heard somewhere, a lot of my stuff was off peoples skill videos off the internet, stuff like Smash combo videos and CS skill videos. I found out the name of songs and downloaded them. And that was pretty much my musical expertise.
I took this time to expand my musical prowess and got into rock/metal. Back in Tucson, the station of choice was a rock/metal station, but I didn't really pay much attention to it. It wasn't until I was at a gate for 12 hours that I suddenly had a reason to listen to music. In addition to my Guitar Hero fanboyism, I borrowed music from everyone. Metallica, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rise Against, Cage the Elephant, Dream Theater, Avenged Sevenfold, Led Zepplin, Guns and Roses, the list goes on for stuff that I picked up on. And I'm grateful for it.
It wasn't until halfway through the deployment that I took a real notice to Snowfruit. Not only was she doing something similar (she leveled pretty much every healing class in the game, except a pally, she got it to 74 iirc), but she was up at odd hours. She said it was something along the lines of night classes, I just shrugged.
We got to talking and I felt closer and closer to her (as close as you could get over the internet, anyways). Long story short, I eventually asked her if she would go out with me when she got back. The reply was a simple "Sure ;P". I was ecstatic for the rest of the deployment, and suddenly had a reason to leave. I wanted to get home as soon as possible and meet this girl face to face. She had shared some pictures with me, and that drove me for the last few months of the deployment.
I came back to the States close to the end of August.
