It has been almost a week since I detached, but surprisingly enough, I was put into an interesting situation when I did walk off the brow.  I got a ride from one of the ITs down to TPU to get checked in since I was no longer attached, and my flight wasn’t until the following week, so why waste those leave days doing nothing?  When I got there, the MM2 at the door told me that I could only stay there if the ship was underway, while having a big smirk on his face.  I guess he thought this was humorous.  Anyways, I stayed at another friends house for the day to find a way to get things settled so I had somewhere to stay.  We tried the BOQ which told us we could only get a room if TPU was full, which it never is.  They also told us that because I was detached that TPU should take me because I am not attached to any ships out here and I am PCSing.  We then went back to TPU to talk with the BOQ so they can get this whole policy straightened out.  This time, we had an SHSN at the desk who looked a lot more eager to help me out than the MM2.  He talked to a CS2, who happened to be the husband of a CS1 on my ship who just said, “fuck it,” and got me into TPU.  6 days with out being charged leave and not having to be on a ship.  With the exception of the weekend I got while I was there, I did have to clean for a few days, but ultimately it was a lot worth it getting out at 1500 everyday.

I am now home in California on leave finally.  Next thing officially scheduled is my trip to Dam Neck, Virginia for my GCCS school.  Though I miss Japan, it got the last laugh.  It might have been something I ate, but I had not felt that sick in a very long time, plane ride and all.

The Navy conducts spotchecks to make sure that the maintenance man is performing the steps properly, in order and has all the tools, parts and any other items required to perform the check.  The inspectors are all E-7 and above because they are expected to guide and teach in the event a question comes up about a check that the person who did the maintenance didn’t quite comprehend or may not have noticed.

About two weeks ago, I was doing a spotcheck and unfortunately I did get an unsat.  At no point did I not perform the steps outlined in the MRC, but the fact that I made some really basic mistakes that I shouldn’t have.  I admit that I could have done a lot better being senior in the division, and experienced maintenance man, but the same goes to the inspector.  On the spotcheck form, it was annotated what I did wrong and I completely agreed.  It wasn’t until a few hours after the spotcheck that I was accused of another mistake that was not brought to my attention during the check.    Not only that, I was being made fun of and laughed at for my additional mistake.  At no point did I think what I did wrong was anything to laugh about.  Spotchecks are serious, and that goes for the inspector as well.  I felt pretty shitty about getting an unsat, but I was more pissed that they could just laugh about it.  The ship has a 3-M inspection in a few months, which I won’t be there for, and when it’s time to get even more serious about making sure people are doing their maintenance properly, they go down and laugh about a failure?

That is unsat on your part and what respect I had for you is definitely gone Chief!

From BBC,

The celebrities, including US CNN broadcaster Rick Sanchez, awoke on Monday morning to find their Twitter accounts – which allows users to post short updates of less than 140 characters – with some bizarre and, in some cases pornographic messages.

The fictional updates included a message from Mr Sanchez saying he would not be in work because he was high on crack, a link to free petrol from Mr Obama and some very personal statistics from Ms Spears.

Though I don’t really use Plurk as much as I did when I started, this goes to show why I chose it over Twitter.

On the first day, no one was allowed to leave the ship until it was deemed clean for Japanese tourists that were scheduled to come aboard. The whole point of visiting here was to promote the Navy, and that we aren’t all bad. As a phone talker on the bridge for pulling in and out of ports, I get see everything that goes on when we pull in or out and this one had protesters waiting on the pier. Definitely a warm and welcoming arrival to Nagoya.

When we finally got out, the first thing any of us wanted to do was get cash and a chuhai. Apparently, no one had money and the closest bank was eleven train stops away in downtown Nagoya. Fortunately I decided against trading in my yen for baht in Thailand, and had plenty to spot my buddies. We got out there, found a bank teller, pulled what we needed, got our drinks and proceeded to get some grub at a near by Yoshinoya.

Full on food, we went out and wanted to find a bar to relax at and play some pool and darts. We found a place recommended on brochures that were handed out to us on the quarterdeck and it didn’t seem bad. The workers were polite and friendly when we got our table and drinks, drinks being a bit pricey. While we were drinking and playing the locals at pool and darts, one of my buddies noticed they did song requests. He asked one of the guys if they had AC/DC and he replied with “We don’t have your music here.” Shocked and appalled, we immediately hated the place, but because it was too late to find anywhere else, we had no choice but to stay, plus we had a cute waitress.

The next day, I didn’t get up until sometime past ten in the morning. Though the bar we were at was not as friendly as we thought, I still had a lot to drink to temporarily get rid of the thoughts of work and had a slight hangover. None the less, we now had a full day ahead of us for sightseeing and we did as much as we could. Actually, we walked around for hours only to visit the TV towers, but we got a good look of the city from the top. Once again night time rolled around and all we wanted was to get drinks and relax and maybe mingle with the locals. The second night consisted of going into bars that resided on third floors or higher and each time we got a look of shock at our presence. I think I’ve gotten down the places that Americans usually aren’t welcomed. About 90% of the places I have experienced that aren’t US friendly reside in bars that are higher than three floors up. I think they put the places up that high because Americans just want to walk into a bar, and not have to ride up three floors to have a good time. The second night a lot more disappointing than the first, we rolled out early and figured that we could probably get some good sleep before our next day for duty.

We will be back in Yokosuka soon, and I can finally get back to my bed that I have been dying to sleep in since we left Thailand. Once again I am in the state of mind that my life is going no where being in Japan. Some things that are headed my way are moving out of the barracks once again, though just a rumor at this point. It would make sense though because I will be getting paid next month. Also, I still am not under orders and my detailers are no help. We will also be going into the yards soon and I am one of the three that will be moving our LAN over to a barge and making sure it is working properly while we get our upgrade on the boat. As much as I am looking forward to this ship getting a LAN upgrade, I feel that I will get nothing out of it because my transfer date is shortly after the yards period. Maybe I’ll get a NAM, but it will be included in the End of Tour, but when I transfer, all I can say I got out of Japan was a few good ports and a lot of lessons learned. I got a lot of good training, and I will carry it over wherever I go next, but I feel I got it to take the load off other peoples shoulders. I’m sure in the next few days I’ll get a talking to about how I am doing and if things are alright but things deep down I can’t to anyone about it, except just a few friends from home who already know.

Just a few months left and I’ll finally be free of this place.

Since I decided to put the Plurk Widget on my site, I thought that I should blog about it as well. Plurk is a place to put your thoughts down, in under 140 characters, about what is on your mind aka microblogging. Another site known for this is Twitter, but this site was brought to my attention first and thus the better of the two, in my opinion. Though it doesn’t seem like much at first, it really isn’t a bad site to just stream bits of your thoughts here and there.

It’s a pretty good alternative to Myspace where you have a blog, which more than likely none of your friends read. Plus, when you sign up, you can either be a fan and view other peoples “plurks” without them having to see yours. If they view your profile, they will be able to see your plurks, and can decide if they want to be friends. Also, the more active you are, the higher your “Karma” goes which allows you to mess with features like display names and such. What ever your put down will be readable by everyone, unless specified private.

As much as I would like to blog about every little thing that goes on in my head, Plurk is nice to dabble a few thoughts here or there without having to write a whole story about it. But don’t worry, I shall continue to blog away when something sparks my interest and feel others should know about it.

My first DITS with this command was a complete disaster. It was the last one my division had with our current CO before he turned over a few months after. Weeks and days leading up to our DITS consisted of hours of cleaning, chipping, grinding, and painting followed by replacement of items such as light bulbs or missing tempest caps. The biggest hit we probably took was the mulch room. It was pretty much the storage room for all the crap we moved out of Radio and other spaces we owned, and tossed in there to prepare for the zone inspection. What was even worse was that the day of the zone inspection our mulch room was so full of junk it was in no condition to be inspected and at the last second, I was tossing things to the side just to clear a path to walk through because there is a fan intake room inside as well, and is also inspected. The second the CO walked in, all I heard was a yell “Oh Shit!” I couldn’t help but chuckle because I knew what he was yelling about, but my LCPO knew the fate of that room and what the reaction was going to be.

The last DITS we had with our new CO was still not good. Our mulch room was definitely a turn around in that you could see the deck, but there was still junk in there that we’ve collected and haven’t gotten around to tossing. Plus, this was a new CO, but then again a first impression is always remembered and there was no doubt that however we did, the next inspection would have to have improvements or it would seem to him that the division doesn’t care about raising its standards and its material condition is completely unsat. With an unsat material condition, it reduces the ships ability to do it’s job and when that happens, it all falls on the CO and he wasn’t going to have that.

The inspection did go a lot better than the first, and the hits were pretty evenly spread out through our spaces, but none the less as a CO, it is his or her duty to find everything and anything wrong. If a CO goes through a space and says it’s good, then the division in charge gets into a relaxed mode and eventually the ships is unable to complete an INSURV and is declared “Unfit for Operation”.

This DITS, compared to the previous two, weren’t as bad because everyone knew what had to be done. Unlike the first two, we didn’t have to juggle our jobs while trying to get ready. We were able to prioritize our time to cleaning, painting, entering in jobs for work we can’t do ourselves and need outside assistance. In fact, this was the most prepared we have been for a DITS since I’ve been here and was confident in that we were going to make it through without feeling like we didn’t do enough. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and we got cut at the legs for things we could have taken care of and didn’t. Our spaces were indeed a lot cleaner than before, deckplates and all, but there were some areas that weren’t taken into account because either we couldn’t reach it, or thought we couldn’t reach it and get it cleaned. We took our common sense hits and in the end we knew we didn’t do enough to get a better outcome.

At the end of the inspection, our Divo told us that we did a hell of a job, though we didn’t feel like it. He said that it is the CO’s job to find these hits or else we’ll just toss them to the side, forget about them and will eventually bite us in the ass, but more importantly bite the CO’s ass. He told us that you have to know your inspector, and since officers are around the CO all the time, they have a better idea of what to expect and better understanding of his comments and reactions. One thing he said was that when our CO is really upset with something, he’ll pull either the Divo or LCPO aside and tell them one on one about something that could have been corrected. That didn’t happen once during this inspection, or so I was told, and it made me feel better.

I still believe there was a lot we could have done, but overall the effort our division put in to getting discrepancies corrected was outstanding. I just hope that with what little time I have left, another DITS is unable to be fit into it.

During my cleaning, I had a thought; what guy would stay up on a weekend night and clean rather than go outside and party with everyone else? I don’t think that very many guys go out of their way to make sure that a room is clean on a Sunday night knowing that they have the next day to do it knowing that it is a day off. I have to say that I don’t think that anyone else on this planet is doing this at this moment, and a very rare few have done it in the past to pass the time. Loser, I probably am.

Anyways, I had the intentions to clean at night anyways, but might as well have a few beers while doing it to make it a tad more enjoyable. Also, I had my laptop rolling playing my favorite band in the world, Bayside. Beer, cleaning, Bayside, do I not have a social life in Japan? I honestly don’t and am not afraid to admit it. I made that decision a long time ago and plan to continue it until I leave. Too many restrictions have held me back from really enjoying Japan like I want to and so I have given in to give up trying to make something of the country.

I couldn’t help but think, that even through all of this, I would make a wonderful boyfriend and one day husband. Who would devote their time on a three day weekend to clean? Very few I am sure and in this it makes me appreciate who I am. I am single, and have had a few relationships that haven’t gone so well. One of them in particular, the most recent one, had me stop and look at myself and realize that I am very fortunate for who I am and not appreciated for it. I was taken advantage of and caught on before I made any mistakes. Today just helped convince me that I have to be very picky on whom I want to be with. I can change little things about me like what I wear and what music I listen to, but to take care of someone else financially and clean up after them; I didn’t care for that abuse then and won’t tolerate it now or ever.

I don’t mind lending here and there, or at times cleaning up after a person, but at no point will I ever be someone’s bank or maid.

Finally she gets done with this guy’s shirts and I pretty much scan the items for her to get the hell out of there. Then I decide I wont want to make food, so I stop to get a ham sandwich. This is an even simpler task that would get me right out and of course out of no where a loud screech blasts into my ears. A kid probably two to three years old is running around screaming for God knows what and everyone is looking at this child wondering the same thing, where are his parents? Believe me that was going through my head.

Why can’t sailors walk in and out of the exchange without the hassle of slow check-out and shrieking kids. This month had a day just before Mother’s Day known as Military Spouse Appreciation Day. I don’t know about you, but Navy spouses, especially wives, have been the biggest pain while being stationed in Japan. Yes, a lot of the guys I work with have wives and they would agree when I say that they suck the pay checks out of them. When you are at the store, they congregate in front of the dairy section and talk about how 2% is better than fat free. Then they go in the checkout line with three items and contest the price because it is cheaper in the catalog and the little old lady from before goes around to other registers to verify the reduced price.

If anything, spouses should honestly remain in the states, because the number of single sailors in Japan are a lot greater than those with spouses, yet they are still capable of slowing us down when we are trying to get simple tasks done like buying food.