(13DEC2008)There have been an awful lot of French soldiers around lately.
I'm used to seeing them occasionally, about as much as I do any other nationality (and there are many), but the last week or so they’ve been present in abundance. They’re hard to miss, really, as many of them wear enormous berets that US soldiers have taken to calling ‘pizza hats’.
I have no formal interaction with them, but I run into them at the PX or the DFAC. Today I go to lunch when what appears to be the entire French contingent is chowing, as they are at almost every table.
I find a seat by myself and have just sat down when a French soldier approaches with his tray of grub and says, in broken English “May I join you? It’s just me.” It turns out to be just him and his three friends, but his asking was simply a formality, and I can’t imagine why I would mind anyhow.
I always bring a book with me to chow, but I leave it unopened as I strike up a conversation with them. Unfortunately, my French is far worse than their English, and their English is horrible. We exchange confused pleasantries, smile politely, and I lose myself in my latest book for the rest of the meal.
The food at the DFAC has taken on a generalized taste regardless of what is actually on the menu. It happens to all of us eventually, as our taste buds become numb to the very limited variety available them. I imagine my buds are angry, or at least bored, and have decided to go on strike until I can provide them with something worth showing up for.
It also does not help that the DFAC routinely runs short on supplies. When I was in Iraq they were ran low on lettuce and started cutting it with cabbage until eventually the entire tray labeled “Lettuce” was in fact filled with cabbage. They weren’t fooling anyone.
Today, as happened in Iraq a few times, they have almost completely run out of soda. The
upright fridges are instead filled with Rip It, an uber-caffeinated “energy supplement” akin to Red Bull, and non-alcoholic beers. I have tried Rip It only once when I was very tired and needed to be alert for a VTC. I don’t touch the near-beer, having it only once in Iraq when I was invited to join a unit after a mission (you don't say no when they're celebrating making it back to base alive).
I worked with a woman in Iraq who drank the near-beer constantly, first thing in the morning and on throughout the day. Probably best she was in theater where alcohol is officially banned and in reality at least very hard to get. We all imagined she would be a sloppy mess in the States.
The current lack of soda doesn’t affect me too much, however, as I recently discovered the iced coffee in the DFAC, and it has been a small source of edible joy, but I have no doubt that it, too, will succumb to the overall malaise that is our menu.
The DFAC has also recently changed their supplier of cutlery, and I am none too happy about it. The old plastic forks, knives, and spoons were perfectly adequate for getting food from my plate to my mouth. The new ones fail far too often in this simple mission.
They are cheap. You can almost see through them, they’re so thin. I eat a lot of broccoli and cauliflower, but the fork is not cut out for the job of stabbing them which, really, is their only job. The tines break far too easily.
Also, the edges of the spoon are too wide, flare upward, and are sharp. I find myself eating Jell-O (I eat a lot of Jell-O) like a 5-year old, putting the entire bowl of the spoon into my mouth. The only thing missing is the airplane noises.
Fridays are steak & seafood nights at the DFAC, and yesterday’s dinner was no different. I didn’t get a steak, as I have to be in the right mood for them, but one of my colleagues did and not only did all of the tines of his fork surrender to the meat, the knife snapped in half as well.
PX = Post Exchange
DFAC = Dining FACility
VTC = Video TeleConference
I'm used to seeing them occasionally, about as much as I do any other nationality (and there are many), but the last week or so they’ve been present in abundance. They’re hard to miss, really, as many of them wear enormous berets that US soldiers have taken to calling ‘pizza hats’.
upright fridges are instead filled with Rip It, an uber-caffeinated “energy supplement” akin to Red Bull, and non-alcoholic beers. I have tried Rip It only once when I was very tired and needed to be alert for a VTC. I don’t touch the near-beer, having it only once in Iraq when I was invited to join a unit after a mission (you don't say no when they're celebrating making it back to base alive).
The DFAC has also recently changed their supplier of cutlery, and I am none too happy about it. The old plastic forks, knives, and spoons were perfectly adequate for getting food from my plate to my mouth. The new ones fail far too often in this simple mission.
