The Beginning of the End

Almost There

I got back into KAF for my final roto four days ago. At only 16 days long, you’d think this one would fly by but the delicious prospect of soon being a hobo has slowed subjective time to a crawl. Luckily, I have the crafting of this pointless compendium of KAF ridiculousness to help pass the time so read on as I tell you about KAF goings-on as if I still give a fuck.

Home for the Holidays

They’re onsie and the same!

I got home for Xmas this year, making me 2 for 6 on that score since starting here. I mention this only so I can share a revelation I had whilst there. My younger daughter, understanding my love of comfort, gave me a “onsie” for Xmas. I thought of it as a bit of a joke and, while it was damn comfortable, I felt a tad silly wearing it around the house. I even asked my wife not to post any pictures of me in it to Facebook. Then, as I was taking it off to shower, I had an episode of extreme deja vu. “The long zipper, shrugging out of the sleeves…why does that feel so familiar?” I wondered. Then it dawned on me. It was almost identical to the flightsuit I’d felt so cool wearing to work during my 27 years in the Air Force. Flightsuits are simply onsies with pockets and patches and if I could swagger around an airshow in a flightsuit, I sure as hell could rock a onsie like a boss. With retirement looming in less than two weeks, I’m considering changing my entire wardrobe over to these cozy wonders.

Blast from the past.

My final journey back to the wonder that is KAF was uneventful but a couple of oddities on the Frankfurt/Dubai leg aboard Lufthansa amused me. Compared to Air Canada, Lufthansa has a pretty shitty selection of movies/tv on its inseat entertainment system. Under TV/Comedy, for example, it’ll have only one episode each of, say, Big Bang Theory or New Girl…both circa 2010 plus some German shows in which everyone just seems to be yelling at each other. Under Movies/SciFi, it’s, somewhat appropriately, like taking a time machine back to 1985…Alien, 2001-A Space Odyssey and Fahrenheit 451? For fuck’s sake! Sure, they toss in one new movie…but it’s Elysium…a ridiculous piece of tripe that I’d watched on Air Canada previously.

And really, someone needs to explain the ashtrays directly underneath the “No Smoking” signs outside the washrooms.

A bit of a mixed message dontcha think?

The Final Food

Fruit Compost

In brief, I ain’t gonna miss the food around here. I mean, sure, it’s nice having bacon and eggs prepared for me each morning but I’m sure my lovely wife, Joan, will be more than happy to ensure I can maintain the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed once I’m a hobo. However, on a scale of Shite to Meh, the rest of the meals since I got back have averaged a solid Blech. The usually reliable Cambridge Chicken Curry was disappointing on Thursday…it wasn’t spicy, good or awful…it was just kinda off. It had weird aftertaste that was neither chickeny nor curry-y. I figger it was either some exotic Indian spice that is too sophisticated for my western, MacDonald’s dulled, bourgeoisie palate…or mould. And, look, Cambridge, cutting up your on-the-verge-of-rotten leftover fruit and sprinkling your on-the-verge-of-fermentation leftover cereal on top of it results in neither “fruit compote” nor my happiness.

I guess I was just a little bit too elated by the Monti’s excellent, unsweetened iced tea and had to be taken down a notch. While I was gone, they replaced it with that vile, uber-sweet, peach iced tea. It is to weep.

Looks Like They Made a Mezza That

No great loss.

Yet another Boardwalk restaurant has been shut down by the COMKAF Medical Advisor. Unlike when Asian Style Food was shut down, I’ll shed no tears for the loss of Mezza. While I knew it was crap, I hadn’t realized it was icky, unsanitary crap. Hmm…I wonder if, by calling their food shit, I was, unknowingly, being literal rather than metaphorical. At least Asian Style food tasted good enough to be worth a bout of dysentery. Mezza wasn’t worth the money, the intestinal distress or having to look at those godawful cartoon chefs.

Now What?

When I started this post last night, my computer locked up (due to some stupid Flash/Firefox issue) so I did the ol’ Cntrl/Alt/Del and tried to “Stop Process” on Flash Player…and this happened:

Fucking Windows

Lipstick on a Pig

Right out of Better Homes and Gardens, eh?

Our new “landlords” seem to be making a real effort to decrease the level of ickiness in our bathrooms. They’ve put up new bright yellow shower curtains to replace the grungy, mouldy white ones and, best of all, installed real metal hooks outside each shower stall. Good thing too because the plastic ones K and I put up have almost all either been stolen or broken. Of course, their most effective action was moving those folks from the more poo-tolerant cultures off to a building of their own. Just imagining what the washrooms in those buildings look like makes me nauseous. Unfortunately, some ablutionarily-challenged folks have remained behind and we still find the occasional shit-sandwich along with the far less offensive, yet still quite disgusting, sink filled with dirt. What the fuck did they wash in there? Oh yeah, and several of the showers (and sinks) don’t drain properly so you end up staying in 3 inches of dirty water and there’s often no toilet paper and most of the soap dispensers don’t work and the one that does is in the washroom with no hot water and some of the toilets leak and several toilets don’t flush properly and the paper towel dispenser is often empty but those shower curtains are fucking beautiful.

Bottom Line

Of course, the end of my interminable KAF career will also mean the end of Just DFACs Ma’am. I have ideas for two or three more posts. My final one is beginning to gel in my head but I think I’ll be posting that from the safety and freedom of Frankfurt on my way home. I’d love to see some other poor fuck working here start a new one to document the KAF food and insanity.

I plan to be unemployed for between 6 months and 30 years. My long-suffering spouse is afraid I’ll get bored and has suggested I start a new blog about my hobo life with the caveat that she can’t be the butt of every joke. If I do start up a new one, I’ll post a link to it here for those who have come to rely on me for their schadenfreude fixes.

“Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.” – Khalil Gibran

“I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.” – Douglas Adams