Ironmanpoundssand's Blog

A gentle answer…

ironmanpoundssand — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:46:24 +0000

…turns away wrath; but a harsh word stirs up anger—that’s Proverbs 15:1
I have a witness to give and want to ensure that as you read it you don’t think I’m telling it to show how “good” I am; that is not what this is about. What it’s about is that God’s word is truth, or like my friend Tony frequently said it is “true truth.” I never asked him what he meant by that but I’d guess it was that God’s word is true truth as opposed to man-made truth. True truth is eternal, unchanging, and unconditional—you can never say “it depends” or “if this… then that…” as a condition to God’s word being the truth. Knowing this is important but living it is awesome! Let me tell you about it.
I’m working with this young officer here in Kuwait to help him with a Lean Six Sigma project he needs to complete in order to get certified. He is very competent and is doing a good job. He is also intelligent so he asks good questions and is not afraid to disagree with me. I welcome that because it challenges me to be a better coach and mentor. However, a couple of times he’s been upset with what I had to say and has revealed a bit of temper. The latest outburst was in an email where he latched on to one sentence in my email and wound himself up and then got it out. Nothing he wrote was improper but neither was it pretty. At first, I’ll confess, I got upset and thought him somewhat impertinent. The thought crossed my mind that one way of responding could be something to the effect of “if you want my continued assistance you’re going to have to calm down. I’m the Master Black Belt and I know more than you!” How do you think that would have worked? Fortunately that thought didn’t last long because it was quickly replaced by the wisdom of God’s word. Probably because of another true truth:
Wisdom is with aged men, with long life is understanding (Job 12:12)
Not that I’m that old—in this case I prefer to think of myself as a more mature believer. So instead of reacting I pointed out to him that there was more to what I had written and that there was no need to be upset. Interestingly, in his “rebuttal” he had addressed the issue and all was good. Part of his response to my “gentle” reply is worth quoting “guess I’ll roll up my jump to conclusions mat for another day.” So you see, Proverbs 15:1 is true. Furthermore, come to find out he too is a believer which I discovered after mentioning Romans 8:28-29.
This anecdote serves to prove once again, for those of you who have heard me mention it before, an important principle I learned. In order to modify our behavior we must start with the right attitude because it is attitude that drives behavior. There isn’t a parent that hasn’t told their child “I don’t like that kind of attitude” when actually what they are observing is behavior. So it seems intuitively obvious that behavior and attitude are directly related. However what we really need to understand is that attitude is formed based on what we believe. This is not so intuitively obvious and it would take too long to explain so I’m going to let you think about—I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Finally, belief can only come from knowledge. Thus knowledge leads to belief leads to attitude leads to behavior. Behavior, you see, can truly only be changed from the inside.
The moral of the story: knowing God’s word is only the beginning—to be transformed you have to believe it!

Unbelievable!

ironmanpoundssand — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:34:28 +0000

I don’t know how many things get me upset. I’d like to think there are few but those of you who know me best may differ. However, I know there is one thing that definitely gets my dander up and that is when someone can’t prove their point and dismisses my questions as unimportant or inconsequential. There is one person here, we’ll call him Shat (which stands for short and fat) in Camp Arifjan that can get me spun up so quickly that it even amazed me, not to mention my colleagues.
So our LSS team had a meeting with Shat last week and he shows us some slides with data in the form of tables and percentages. There are also graphs and bar charts that look very pretty. All of these are the outputs of a “model” that is supposed to help with some planning needed for support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (i.e. Afghanistan.) The purpose of our meeting is so that we can cooperate and mutually support each other with our respective efforts.
So I look at the numbers and I’m trying to figure out what they are telling me. To do this I need to know what the definitions are of the table headings, right? But Shat doesn’t like definitions because they are too constraining. You see the definitions change depending on whether you are talking large quantities (macro level) or eaches… eaches? What the hell are eaches?!!! Shat explains that “eaches” are individual units or micro level. Also, Shat is okay if my definition and his definition are not the same and neither does it matter if we change our definition for the same word more than once in the same conversation. So I decide I’m going to call him a moron, but of course I mean that in a good way—not the bad meaning of moron. Except when I do mean moron in a bad way but he won’t know which definition I’m using so even when I’m insulting him I can choose whichever definition I want.
Now, imagine trying to communicate with someone under this paradigm. I remember being “enlightened” about the differences in communication between men and women after reading “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.” Except Shat is from Pluto which, fittingly enough, used to be defined as a planet but no longer is one. So I can’t tell what he is but that is okay because I believe neither can he. Except he’s very sure he is a professor of operations research but he really doesn’t want to toot his own horn. I’m happy to hear that because it is very difficult to toot a horn by blowing hot air out of your… rear, which is what Shat does.
Somehow we got through the first meeting and decided, for what reason I can’t remember, that we should make these meetings a recurring occurrence. “Maybe next time it won’t be so bad—I’ll just ask an easy question” – I tell myself and it will go much better. Except it doesn’t! I ask and Shat can’t explain, gets flustered and accuses us of nitpicking at his briefing which, by the way, was not put together for us. Oh, well, that makes it much better, right? WRONG!!! Shat and his team are briefing generals… WHAT?! GENERALS!!! You mean the guys making decisions based on what he’s telling them? Oh Lord, save us from the moron! And I mean “moron” as in when you want to insult someone; not the good kind of moron which might be in Bizarro world . Now that I think of it Shat may be from Pluto but in a Bizarro-like parallel universe and he just keeps on jumping from our dimension to the other and we never know which one we are talking to.
So let me tell you more about him. Shat the moron from Pluto/Bizarro has a team that generates models based on parameters given to him by people who are making assumptions about processes they don’t understand. However the beauty of Shat’s work is that if the model is wrong he’s not at fault because he doesn’t control the inputs but if the outputs happen to be right he gets all the credit because the model worked. What a deal! This just isn’t right!!!
So if you are watching the news in the coming weeks and you hear a report coming from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait about an Arab-looking Puertorican going postal and loping off the head of a walking-living Napoleon complex (without any of the original’s accomplishments that might justify developing the complex) while unceasingly repeating “kill the moron, kill the moron” look or listen no further… it’s about me.

A day in Kuwait life…

ironmanpoundssand — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:02:27 +0000

…is a mixture of dichotomies.
Pristine and trashed; fast and slow; modern and traditional; dry and wet; large and small, convenient and inconvenient.
Three weeks in Kuwait already provide a lifetime of experiences very much unlike what we have in the good ol’ US of A. I hope my recount of Saturday will give you a flavor.
The day starts early. The alarm is set for 5:30 am but the call to prayer over the blaring loudspeakers at the nearby mosque is at 4:15. Not that Christian churches are any different with their bells but at least the hours are much more reasonable. In case you didn’t wake up with call to prayer you can always count on the backup which is the close of prayer over the same blaring loudspeakers about 45 minutes after the call. Actually, if you choose to look at the silver-lining, it is much nicer than the 9 min snooze the alarm clock gives you. With all that time you can actually get some sleep.
Our team of three meets in the basement parking to get into our large SUV, which has been conveniently washed by Ahmed (I think that is the correct spelling) and proceed to collapse the side view mirrors. We wind our way through the maze of pillars and approach the exit gate which creeps up at a rate of 6 inches per minute. The SUV is over 60 inches tall so you do the math (it’s really not that slow but it sure seems like it.) The collapsed mirrors increase the side clearance through the exit ramp to about eight inches on either side—thank God for collapsible mirrors! Although, if they didn’t I suppose we would slowly grind them to a nub which may be what the black scrapes along the wall seem to indicate other people have done.
We speed along the highway as we admire, or rather cringe at the sight of, the catastrophic wrecks from the night, or nights, before. So the speed limit is 75 mph but that wreck looks more like he was going over 100. Probably survived because, at some point, it was an expensive looking Mercedes. It takes 15 minutes to cover 90% of the distance to get to work. At this point we reach the beginning of the gauntlet into Arifjan which will take 30 minutes to get through. Security is tight and suspicion rather than trust is the premise in this operation, i.e. thorough inspection including cavity search… car cavities that is you dirty minded readers! A small price to pay, really, when you consider the peace of mind you have once inside the Camp.
This Saturday is a rainy day and I mean rain with thunder, wind gusts and heavy downpours. Everything is wet and the dirt/sand roads in Arifjan have ruts carved into them by the running water. You’d think the ground is thirsty for water and it would all get absorbed rather quickly. If so you’d think wrong! The pools of water are everywhere and getting in and out of the car we track sandy mud everywhere. How can a dry desert be so wet? Not to worry, tomorrow is a dry day followed by another dry day, followed by another dry day… you get the picture.
After a 10 to 12 hour day in Arifjan it is time to head back. The outbound gauntlet is much more benign and only takes about 5 minutes to go through. Once past the gauntlet the wide one-lane outbound road towards the highway is too much of temptation to remain at the 40 mph speed limit. Either you scoot over as close to the right edge and give room to the car flashing its headlights on the left that passes you at 70 mph or you become one of them and pass the semi-tractor trailer in a similar manner. So the clearance isn’t that much but we’ve practiced coming out the basement garage—a few inches clearance is more than enough. It is inconvenient that the only way you can go when you hit Expressway 30 (the road home) you can only go south when you need to go north. However, Kuwaitis have conveniently included legal U-turns across the median. Our SUV has good acceleration which makes merging into the 100 mph traffic on leftmost northbound lane a little less hair-raising than it would otherwise be.
Tonight we need to complete the shopping for our Sunday dinner party at the apartment. We are looking for The Sultan Centre grocery store which happens to be in this particular neighborhood’s center of activity. After 20 minutes in the traffic jam we still haven’t seen the store so we decide that looking on foot will be much faster than driving. Thank God here come three obviously American-looking dudes who fortunately know where Sultan is… we were going the wrong way. We turn around but don’t seem to see it so we ask someone again who is neither Kuwaiti nor a westerner but thankfully speaks English. We proceed, putting our lives at risk several times as we cross the roads but we finally make it to the two story hypermarket which till now remained unnoticeable due to its poorly lit sign hiding behind the palm trees. Despite being hard to find it has everything we need and it only takes us 30 minutes to figure out that powdered cinnamon is labeled cassia when we see cassia sticks that look a lot like cinnamon sticks. We should have asked someone but three Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belts are too proud to admit ignorance unless we are absolutely desperate… as in not being able to find the Sultan Centre even though it should be RIGHT HERE! But the time was not entirely wasted as on our to and from Sultan Centre we had the opportunity to traverse an ultra-modern mall, replete with western-style shops, and filled with people dressed in everything from burgas to jeans. The mix of traditional Kuwaiti attire—men wear a dishdasha (robe) and a headdress consisting of a gahfiah, gutra and ogal and women wear abas (black tunics that hide western style clothing though the green stiletto shoes do show under—with western types is incredible. At a minimum there are Indians, Pakistanis, Asians (my guess Koreans), some Europeans and three gringos… well actually two gringos and one Arab-looking Latino.
It is late heading back to the apartment but nonetheless we can’t help but notice the juxtaposition of tiled floor sidewalks along the mall while just across the street the sidewalk is cracked and trash is strewn all over. There is construction going on everywhere in the suburbs of Kuwait City. The finished products are beautiful but there are still a lot of older structures where the thousands of immigrants that do all the clerical and menial work live and those don’t look very appealing.
We are finally back to the apartment, time to “prepare for docking” which is our code for time to collapse the side-view mirrors again so that we can make into the parking without grinding them to a nub.
Tomorrow is Sunday and we’ll venture out to explore some. Monday will be like today but without the trip to The Sultan Centre—we’ll have to do that again sometime.

In Kuwait do as…

ironmanpoundssand — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:59:53 +0000

…the Kuwaitis do—especially when you are on the road.
Driving in Kuwait can be a harrowing experience unless you learn and adapt. If you are afraid of speed you may want to think twice…no, better forget altogether any idea of driving over here. The speed limit on the 3-lane expressway is 120 km/h which is 75 mph; however, if you wander into the left lane you should spend 50% of your time looking in the rear view mirror because it isn’t rare to have an SUV approach your rear bumper at well over 100 mph. It really isn’t that bad if they come straight up the left lane the problem is when they come in pairs and are cutting across all three lanes racing each other. A few nights ago I wasn’t checking the rear often enough and by the time I looked I couldn’t see the headlights of the car behind—that’s how close he was and I was going over 80 mph. There ain’t no 2-second rule in this country!
On the other hand, if you are impatient you don’t want to drive in Camp Arifjan. The fastest posted speed limit is 40 km/h, or 25 mph, however most of the camp is 20 km/h except in the morning from 0500 to 0800 (that is 5 to 8 am for you civilians) when the main road to the dining facility is 15 km/h. I don’t think they give speeding tickets to bicycles because I saw one passing the cars.
More about Kuwait later but for now just a quick confession, just don’t tell Nora. I too was driving at 100 mph—it’s nice not having to worry about getting caught by the cops cause they are far and few between.

Not quite a beduin…

ironmanpoundssand — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:04:05 +0000

…but nevertheless a tent-dweller.

“Welcome to Camp Arifjan! Here is your tent to share with as many as seven other roommates. The latrines are 30 yards away but make sure all your stuff is locked up in the upright metal cabinets (thank you Mike for the padlocks!) before you head there because our transient population has been known to suffer from ‘sticky fingers’ syndrome. By the way, you’ll probably get the Kuwait crud but it should pass in a week—this is caused by the very fine dust-like sand particles that are everywhere and penetrate everything.”

Okay, so no one actually said it quite that way but all those things were mentioned one way or another. I’m happy to report that no one’s fingers got stuck on my stuff though I did get the Kuwait crud..or maybe it was a reaction to the H1N1 vaccine I had to take on Monday. I’m happy to report that at the time of this writing the crud has subsided and is almost gone. I am also happy to report that I’m no longer in a tent and have moved up to a PODS, or Personal Occupancy Depressing Shack—the PODS part is the true name but the Depressing Shack and all the rest I just made it up on the spot. The latrine/shower is only 30 feet away and I only have to lock my door when I go out.

Actually Camp Arifjan is not all that bad. It has all the modern conveniences such as fast food staples like BK, Taco Bell and Subway and there are even three Starbucks. You can also get Oakley glasses and order a Harley on your way home.

Camp Arifjan is the main stop in South West Asia (SWA) for all military equipment transiting between Iraq, Afghanistan and the US. Convoys are constantly coming in with everything from HMMWVs, to construction equipment and thousands of containers. This is a massive logistic effort to say the least and is ripe for Lean Six Sigma to help make more efficient. I hope to make my contribution to this effort.

Introduction

ironmanpoundssand — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:48:27 +0000

Hello family and friends!

Most of you know that soon I’ll be on my way to Kuwait thus the reason for this blog.

Me blogging?! I feel so 21^st century.

Anyway, I decided to go “blog” rather than email due to the many conveniences not the least of which is ease of accessibility for me and you. What you can expect in this blog are personal and professional posts with, as appropriate, a humorous and/or spiritual touch.

Some posts will have a professional tone—these will be mostly of interest to my Lean Six Sigma friends and colleagues. If you don’t know what I mean by “Lean Six Sigma” then you are not a colleague and even though I’ve tried to explain it to you many times you still don’t get it. I’ll warn the non-LSS savvy audience so that they don’t start reading something that sounds like one of those high school word problems, i.e. “if a train leaves Chicago doing 45 mph…”

Some posts will be more personal and go into significant cultural and people-related observations. The personal will also include my attempts to keep up with triathlon training. Which brings me to an appropriate point to explain why the blog URL is “ironman_pounds_sand.” I believe all of you know I’m a triathlete, thus the “ironman” bit. The “pounds_sand” has to do with the fact that I expect to see a lot of sand, and possibly even run on it, thus my feet will be pounding the sand. Please do not interpret “pounding sand” by its traditional meaning, i.e., to engage in futile activity as I don’t think the work I’ll be doing is such.

To conclude this first posting some food for thought. It seems to me that everything in life is either geared towards learning or laughing. Challenges and tough times produce learning—about ourselves, about others, and about God. The same challenges and tough times can also produce laughter but, more likely, laughter will result from something that is actually funny and often includes some element of stupidity. “Stupid is as stupid does” said Forrest Gump—hopefully I won’t be the source of the stupidity… but if I were you I wouldn’t be surprised if I am.

Some specifics: I start my travels this Friday, 30 October, to go through Fort Benning, GA and after 4 to 7 days on to Kuwait.

Ta-ta for now.