Pollen and hot water

Hi everyone. Feeling miserable at the moment. I suspect that all the rain we had last week, plus the advent of spring, has kicked some of the local foliage into growth, to the point that I am suffering from hay-fever. Either that or all the mosquito bites have overidden my malaria meds, and I now have malaria. Either way I feel nasally, congested and headachey.

Read Jason's update from yesterday with interest, especially the bit about water. That intrigued me. He says he's living in one of Saddam's ex-palaces (like me), but they don't have alot of clean water. Now, Saddam was fanatical about water, he loved to swim, and he loved baths. We have two swimming pools here, as well as a huge bathub in our room (almost as big as the jacuzzi). All of these are supplied by water coming in from canals from nearby low land swamps, which is then filtered. Its not entirely clean (for God's sake don't drink it!!) but it does allow us the luxury of long hot showers. I suspect that Jason's palace complex is the same. The point I'm trying to make is either a) the Marines are being finicky, and want perfectly clean water to shower in, or b) they haven't figured out how to filter the water to make it mostly clean. Either way, it speaks loads for the Marines (couldn't resist a little inter-service dig there). Shoulda come to the dark-side, Jason.

The other thing that struck me as funny (ironic funny, no less), was him talking about the movies. Now we don't have any hajji shops over here (that's the generic term for them, from the root hajj, which is the term for the the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are required to undertake once in their lifetime. The term hajji is a derogatory term applied to anything local in Iraq, from the people, to the way things are built, as in hajji construction) but there are a couple on the bigger bases nearby. They sell DVD movie packages, which are all bootleg, as well as warezd software. Had the same thing in Kosovo. Kind of funny that we can come into a country to provide security and American values, then buy up everything cheap we can possibly get, ripping off copyright holders in the US of millions of dollars in lost revenue in the process. And its all quasi sanctioned by the US military. Great example we're setting for the world.

Anyway, I had better get going.

Take care of yourselves, and each other.

Myron