The first post from the island

Welcome to Inso’s World again and as you will have noticed; I am a week late in posting. The reason for this is that I am now in the Falkland Islands and have had a very busy couple of weeks. It all started with a 26 hour journey from my front door to my new room on the island. I spent 16 of those hours in the air, with the remainder being an hour to get me to the airport and a lot of time waiting around. Being an insomniac, I didn’t get any sleep on the aircraft so I started my time here tired... but that didn’t stop me having to do ground defence training, rifle zeroing, arrivals processing and then sorting out my life when I got here. I was then put straight on call-out for over a week whilst being second in command of my own little platoon of 30 troops (something a little alien for a desk-bound, aircraft technician). That said, it has certainly been entertaining and time has flown by.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to celebrate the New Year in a fashion of my choosing (due to being on call-out) so my new year began on the evening of the sixth Jan and included cider and darts.

The section I am on has a bunch of great people on it and it was thanks to them that I got Christmas Day at home (they shared all the duties of the guy who I replaced for a few days so that I could come here a little later than the 24th Dec; which is when I was due to leave the UK). A lot of my work is Health and Safety, documentation, Quality Assurance and other office work but on top of that, I have my platoon to look after and a number of other little jobs to keep me busy.

There is still the opportunity to get out and about and see the sights so it isn’t all work and no play. In fact, on Friday night, I spent an evening in the mess and got the opportunity to sing a few Karaoke tunes so it was a fun evening.

My room is quite spacious and has all the home comforts including a TV and a sink (it enables me to wash and shave without having to queue up at the communal facilities so it is a godsend). The bed is comfier than my bed at home so I am starting to get a bit of sleep now that I have settled a bit. Here is the view from my window (I have blotted out certain items for security purposes... the Islands are, after all, still contested by the Argentineans):
 

Click the Pic!

As you can see, it is a bit bleak.

I have brought some sculpting to do but haven’t started doing it yet because I have been settling in. I expect that I will start doing some sculpting soon so that my bunch of Squats finally get their arms.

The internet wireless can be patchy and it costs £8 - £10 for 100 minutes (although there is the opportunity to use free internet from fixed consoles) so I am restricting my internet usage. As a result of that, my forum and blog activities have been reduced so I can spend more time talking to my family.

Well, that’s about it for now. I am sure that once I start getting into the routine of things, I will post more interesting things but for now, I will bid you farewell.

See you from the command post!