Let's play "Find the Bomb"!
I had my second day of work today at the Embassy Health Unit (doctors office to you civilians) the four women who work there are very nice, and encourage me to take breaks often and take a long lunch - I couldn't ask for a better working environment, except maybe if I had a computer and I got to make powerpoint presentations...but that will come soon. Actually the nurse Shannon came up with a "project" for me to do: I get to make a bulletin board about the new and improved food pyramid!! hahaha - I can't beleive I'm getting paid $7.50 an hour to make a health project. Oh well, it'll probably be better than photocopies.
Today I spent time organizing the backlog of medical records; taking people's records who had moved away and transferring them to envelopes to be stored in a file cabinet in the back room. While I was doing this, I heard a man's voice come over what sounded like a loudspeaker; "ATTENTION EMBASSY BUILDING COORDINATORS: REPORT TO THE CONSULAR OFFICE IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT...". I thought this was a little weird, but maybe some people were late to a meeting, and they decided to address it directly; who knows, I just went back to filing. About 20 minutes later I hear Janet, one of the other nurses talking in a low voice to Shannon, and after she had finished said "Did you hear that Ruth?" I said "no...?" and she said "ok, well just stay in there". So I'm thinking hm, some kind of lock down? Then Janet comes in, looking all around her and is like "Now, this is just a drill, but they've planted a bomb somewhere in the Embassy, and we are all to look around and see if we can find it". "Oh." I reply "so...I'll just...stay here then". "That would be fine" says Janet "until when they find it, they'll declare an evacuation...hmm...I hope they didn't hide it in here, because we would never find it!"
Well turns out it was not in our office, which is a good thing since if it was, and we didn't find it, we'd be simulated dead I guess. And yes, I know it sounds absolutely crazy to have civilian workers searching for a bomb in their office, but I think it's more of a drill to get you aware of anything looking suspicious rather than a practical excercise in bomb threat investigation. The embassy is really big on drills; every saturday morning is a duck and cover drill (remember the work week is saturday to wednesday) and each year they have a full out mass casualty excercise with a scenario, moulage (the fake wounds and blood), cars being blown up in the parking lots and helicopter evacuations. The best part is, this year they didn't tell the kuwaiti hospitals it was just a drill, since I guess the year before they did tell them and they were basically just chilling at dunkin donuts till it was time for them to go rescue people. My mom was the "invisible photographer" for the latest one, and got to run around taking first hand pictures of the fake insurgent/kuwaiti police gunfights, car bombs and helicopter landings. I might be able to locate pictures later.
Today I spent time organizing the backlog of medical records; taking people's records who had moved away and transferring them to envelopes to be stored in a file cabinet in the back room. While I was doing this, I heard a man's voice come over what sounded like a loudspeaker; "ATTENTION EMBASSY BUILDING COORDINATORS: REPORT TO THE CONSULAR OFFICE IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT...". I thought this was a little weird, but maybe some people were late to a meeting, and they decided to address it directly; who knows, I just went back to filing. About 20 minutes later I hear Janet, one of the other nurses talking in a low voice to Shannon, and after she had finished said "Did you hear that Ruth?" I said "no...?" and she said "ok, well just stay in there". So I'm thinking hm, some kind of lock down? Then Janet comes in, looking all around her and is like "Now, this is just a drill, but they've planted a bomb somewhere in the Embassy, and we are all to look around and see if we can find it". "Oh." I reply "so...I'll just...stay here then". "That would be fine" says Janet "until when they find it, they'll declare an evacuation...hmm...I hope they didn't hide it in here, because we would never find it!"
Well turns out it was not in our office, which is a good thing since if it was, and we didn't find it, we'd be simulated dead I guess. And yes, I know it sounds absolutely crazy to have civilian workers searching for a bomb in their office, but I think it's more of a drill to get you aware of anything looking suspicious rather than a practical excercise in bomb threat investigation. The embassy is really big on drills; every saturday morning is a duck and cover drill (remember the work week is saturday to wednesday) and each year they have a full out mass casualty excercise with a scenario, moulage (the fake wounds and blood), cars being blown up in the parking lots and helicopter evacuations. The best part is, this year they didn't tell the kuwaiti hospitals it was just a drill, since I guess the year before they did tell them and they were basically just chilling at dunkin donuts till it was time for them to go rescue people. My mom was the "invisible photographer" for the latest one, and got to run around taking first hand pictures of the fake insurgent/kuwaiti police gunfights, car bombs and helicopter landings. I might be able to locate pictures later.