Arrival

Posted by Brett on Jul 24, 2010 in Army

The transition into the position at Camp Arifjan wasn’t horrible, but the atmosphere of the place was interesting. To keep it simple, there were strong negative feelings across the office among several different people. And really, the atmosphere hasn’t changed that much even to this day. Maybe it’s a side effect of too many high ranking individuals in a small town. The atmosphere at my regular job at UnitedHealth Group does seem a lot more collaborative.

There was certainly a lot of information even beyond what I learned at DFAS Indianapolis related to the job. There are a multitude of organizations within the government running projects and pilots across the Theater. Included in this list would be PRTs, Threat Finance Cells, USAID, the Department of State, the TFBSO, the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, DFAS, and various factions within the military, Finance being one and Contracting another.

Also, the actual financial infrastructure has many differences between the Commercial Bank/Savings and Loan/Credit Union structure we’re used to in the United States. For instance, there is a hawala system across much of the Middle East, including Aghanistan, which is about half of a millennium old. Basically hawaladars (people who run “branches”) are sworn into the career, and allow people to send money through their system for a fee. It’s basically a low tech system to wire funds where the different hawaladars meet occasionally to settle their books. Otherwise, the vast majority of people in Afghanistan carry the money they have, and are suspicious of the local banks.

Of course, all of that information doesn’t matter if we can’t in some way act on it. The goal of my organization is to prevent the loss of US funds entrusted to Army Financial Management Companies and promote US goals, such as strengthening the financial infrastructure of host nations.

So, that’s the general gist of what I’m up to over here at Camp Arifjan. I suppose I’ll start posting updates a little more specific to current events now that the baseline is established.

Add to your roll:

Tags: army banking, Army Finance, Camp Arifjan, US Organizations

CRC at Ft Benning

Posted by Brett on Jul 23, 2010 in Uncategorized

Before heading to the Middle East, I was at least able to acclimate a little bit to the hotter weather I would encounter by spending a week at the Combat Readiness Center (CRC) at Ft Benning, GA. I’m truly glad that the whole administrative process was a little bit faster than the last time I went overseas, but the whole thing could still be described as a painful, Army hurry-up-and-wait style mess.

The simple way to put it is that everyone does everything as a group. In some cases, this makes sense. There are a number of mandatory classes. One class, which was a brief on the CRC process, showed a video of people waiting in line and looking at presentations! That would be a prime example of how empty some of these classes were.

Sometimes, this doesn’t work out logically quite as well. With a little creative effort, they could very well schedule individuals or small groups of people into appointed blocks of time and rotate them through separate stations, such as equipment issues and medical checkups, but instead, they’ll show up with a massive group of people and take the whole day to get them all through. Additionally, they could locate the required employees and facilities right by the bunkhouses where everyone says, but instead they have even the CRC specific training facilities (only used by CRC mind you) about a mile up the road. The location of the CRC site is a little ridiculous too – it’s way out in the middle of the forest. So, they have to have dedicated transportation to get everyone to and from many of the required sites located at the main post.

To their credit, they at least had smaller huge groups than what I’ve experienced in the past, so the logic center of my brain wasn’t quite at a lifetime high level of excruciating disbelief.

I did manage to set a lifetime experience record in one area however. One of my contractor roommates (there were four people per room in this temporary housing) snored louder than anyone I’ve met in my entire life. It was so bad that the other two people in the room moved out the day after we got there. Now, I’m a heavy sleeper, so I thought I could take it. I could not sleep unassisted through his snoring though. I think it’s because he really sounded like he was dying, suffocating right there in his bunk. I did stick it out though by wearing ear-plug type ear buds with the music set on repeat.

Finally, after shuffling papers and having my papers shuffled for a week, I got on the flight over to the Middle East (without my boss since he was held back for a medical review). Sixteen hours later I landed in Kuwait, drove for an hour to the transition site, waited for my bags for an hour, drove for an hour to Camp Arifjan, and spent another hour checking into my bunk-cubicle in a huge room at the I-Building. It was quite the journey to get to my hovel away from home.

Add to your roll:

Tags: army, Camp Arifjan, CRC, Ft Benning, inefficient processes

Indiana

Posted by Brett on Jul 18, 2010 in Uncategorized

One thing is for sure – living out of a hotel room is a painful existence. I stayed at a Hampton Inn to the NE side of Indianapolis for about 10 days, followed by the Holiday Inn in downtown Indianapolis during my training.

I found myself missing the easy access to parks and trails around my condo in Minnetonka, MN. I did get out for a few runs at both locations in Indy, but I was felt I was inhaling a few too many fumes from the traffic to find runs in the area to be very enjoyable. Towards the end of my stay, I found myself preferring the treadmills at the LA Fitness gyms in the area.

As far as the locals sights, I thought the Circle Center in downtown Indianapolis was pretty cool, and I really liked the area around Caramel, IN, which not coincidentally was named one of the top small towns in America by Money Magazine recently.

I was able to visit my buddy Rob in Bloomington, IN one of the weekends I was there. I hadn’t gambled for awhile, and we headed to the far south end of Indiana to a place called French Lick, which was medium sized casino/resort in the area. In usual fashion, I lost about $200 to that institution, and in his usual fashion, Rob got the equivalent to a Royal Flush and some other jackpot while we were there, netting him about $3k. At least he was a good sport about it and picked up dinner.

Other than that, I fell in love with Yelp.com all over again. It’s a lifesaver when you don’t know where the hell to eat.

Add to your roll:

Tags: Bloomington, French Lick, hotel living, Indiana, Indianapolis

DFAS Indianapolis

Posted by Brett on Jul 18, 2010 in Uncategorized

DFAS Indianapolis is an enormous building. The facility is a large square monolithic looking place found in the suburbs of Indianapolis. All around the exterior, apart from the side facing the main road, are fields of parking lots. Inside, the place has as much character as a hospital. Maybe even less so. The long halls running through the interior of the place are bereft of any color, art, or anything else that may cause warmth or please the eye. The basic amenities are there – offices, a coffee shop, a small shop, a cafeteria, and a small, outdated gym – but it isn’t any place someone would visit besides to do work.

Before going to DFAS Indianapolis, the only experience I had in my mind about the place was the mess they had made with travel voucher reimbursement for fellow Lieutenants when I attended the Finance Basic Officer Leadership Course this past year. So, in many ways, I initially felt like I was headed to some hornet’s nest.

However, and thankfully, the only people I met for training there were knowledgeable and competent. Me and my boss, a Lieutenant Colonel from the Reserve Component, had a fairly packed schedule as we were brought up to date on the several systems DoD currently utilizes in order to reduce the amount of currency on the battlefield. We also met several key people within DFAS, and one from the Pentagon, who are a wealth of information on DoD finance policy.

If you want to know the breadth of information this policy covers, take a look at the DoDFMR online (link). Mainly, we use the DoD FMR Volume 5 Chapters 12, 14, and 34 for what we do as the ARCENT/326th FMC Banking Team.

One peculiar thing I noticed about the working atmosphere around DFAS was the strong personal feelings, both positive and negative, that permeated just about every working relationship throughout the place. Was this due to bad leadership, bad followers, or was it just the price to pay for having very knowledgeable people who are just set in their ways? I wasn’t entirely sure, and I didn’t stay long enough to really judge it one way or the other.

In the end, I felt, and still feel, that my experience there brought me up to speed on the essentials I need here at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.

Add to your roll:

From the Beginning

Posted by Brett on Jul 18, 2010 in Uncategorized

My life has been a bit of a whirlwind since the beginning of 2010. I can’t believe it’s already halfway through the year! However, from what I understand, the perceived speed of time grows exponentially faster with age, so I’m not going to sweat it.

I have made promises that I would provide updates during my second deployment to SW Asia, so I’m going to take the time to catch up with said updates over the next day to two. I’m sorry to anyone who’s tried to check up for the delay. Hopefully I don’t disappoint anyone who has the good heart to follow this second adventure.

Add to your roll: