August 08, 2003

U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Phone Home via Video-Conference.

This is very cool. From Turning Tables, written by an American soldier in Iraq:

this one was on honest to god conference room that i’m sure was used by saddam and all of his buddies…and now it belongs to us…because we took it…

a big U shaped table…dark wood…most definitely imported…the big guy spares no expense…and every chair was plush and colorful with hand carved wood trim…there was another giant screen on the far wall…and projected onto this screen was my brigade conference room back at the fort…

i stroll in and i see the sergeants family who was in front of me saying good bye to his…a big family with 3 kids and a wife trying desperately to keep her composure and get her family out of there in an orderly fashion…and then in the corner of the screen…coming through the door way…is a very distorted shape that the camera is trying to focus on…it walks like my girlfriend…it’s the same size as my girlfriend…and it just so happens that it is my girlfriend…she giggles…and i wave and smile…

i have to press a foot switch every time i want to speak so that the microphone turns off…other wise the delay will cause an echo that is killer…there is at least a 15 seconds of delay that makes normal conversation useless…speak…pause…pause… pause…pause…response…but she is there and she can here me and i can see her…

she’s wearing the ‘curious george’ shirt i bought her on the universal city walk in l.a…it fits her perfect…and her hair is beautiful…she’s had 3 hair cuts since i left…but luckily she sends me pictures…so i stay up to date with the girlfriend fashions…

we have this thing that we do…it is very silly…but its so great…it started one night when we were at a rave in l.a….to the beat i say “girlfriend” while i nod my head…and then i say “run in place”...which i do…to the beat…it’s a sign of my affection…so there i am…in baghdad iraq…running in place…in saddams conference room…so that my girlfriend can watch me over a v.t.c. on the other side of the earth…i’m sure that every network administrator who was tuned in from here through kuwait and germany and washington d.c. got a good hearty belly laugh out of my foolishness…but i did it all for the nookie…

my woman brought pictures that she ran over to the camera on her side and showed me…then she jumped up and down so that i could see her up close…the camera was up on a shelf…

then i showed her my muscles…my big ol’ arms that are twice the size as when i left…she was impressed…or she at least faked it for me…she’s a good woman…

the 8 minutes went so quick and half of it was wasted on the delay…so we got about a good four minutes of talking…but we made a life time of memories…