1 little 2 little 3 little Indians...

...And when I say "Indians," I dont mean "injuns," I mean people from India. Ok, so today was eventful in the fact that I was fairly busy for most of it, and when I wasn't busy I was doing two of my favorite things: Playing with a large puppy and discussing kilometers to the litre (of gas) in my car back in the states. So yeah, we showed up to the pink house (cuz its pink) and they have a really cool puppy there. I don't know his name, but he's gonna be an enormous dog. Anyway, I played with him for about an hour and a half, until he got mad at me and started attacking me. Then he got tired of attacking me and he went outside and ate some chicken. In any case, I saw one of the coolest things ever outside of the pink house. For those of you who dont know, a satellite dish covered in heineken can aluminium is something to behold. I went up on the roof and played up there for a few hours, and it was hotter than hades. However, there was a nice view of a castle right there that looks quite biblical. After being scorched for a while, I went down and watched cricket. I don't understand the rules of cricket, so one of the magic Indians sat down with me and explained the rules. I call them the magic Indians (there's 5 of them) 'cuz when I first got here the big deal was to get them out to Afghanistan so they could solve the internet problems. Cuz let's face it, when people dont have internet they shit themselves. Then when they have internet, if it's slow, they shit themselves before their underwear can even dry up. (See previous post about some of the people around here to get an idea of the type of people who might shit themselves daily.) After we talked about cricket for a bit, he asked me many questions about how many kilometers to the litre my car at home gets. I'm fine with miles - km conversion, but I dunno how many litres there are in a gallon. I know how big a 2 litre bottle is - that's about it. So he debated for a while about the size and we continued watching cricket.

When we were leaving, a little Afghani kid walked up and asked me for a dollar. I usually dont give it to em. In the words of Robert Heinlein, "The worst thing you can do for a starving person is give them food." *Give* is the keyword here. Maybe I forgot about that little line I've been throwing out every so often these days, but I felt like being in a giving mood so I gave the kid a dollar. And unless "Thank you" in Dari is "Give me another dollar," I think I learned my lesson (again.) A dollar here is probably a day's salary for his dad, and all he can say is "Gimme another one." He's lucky I'm not in the business of kicking kids in the abdomen, or he'da had a rough rest of the week.

I suppose I should mention what we did last night too. We went over to the ISAF compound 'cuz the word on the street was that there was pizza and beer. ISAF are like the international security forces or something - it's a multi-national force, but yesterday we went to the Italian compound cuz they had pizza. They also had a little club set up, and it actually had the feel of a club, at least a club where everyone was in uniform and carrying whatever enormous rifle the Italian military is issued. It also had a very European feel to it though - ridiculously tight track suits, bubble-gum techno music, and people attempting to dance to it. We bailed at about 10:30pm, but not before I could get a picture with a bunch of Italian servicemembers. Fortunately, my predictions were wrong - we didnt get the shit beat out of us by a bunch of handsome Italian men, but on the plus side it looks like we might have something to do on Saturday nights. And we had good pizza. With corn on it. Just like in Japan.

More later-