My thoughts have turned to elections.  We have been tasked with giving the USAF some ideas of what can be deleted in order to save money and my thoughts have turned to election (not that it falls within the USAF's realm, but I was thinking).

  First, we should eliminate the Electoral College.  We already have to count the votes in each state/district, why not stop there.  Why spend the money to actually send people to Washington, DC to cast the Electoral College votes?  When it took weeks for the wagons to collect ballots and days to count them, the Electoral college might have made sense.  Now it is a way to disenfranchise voters who are of a minority opinion in the area that they live and help the Two big parties concentrate the money spending in a few "key states".  Doing away with the Electoral College would save money, truly make the "one person, one vote" really count, and force the parties to address the entire population equally.

  Second, why do Tax Payers pay for Primary elections for the Democrats and Republicans?  There are many Parties who choose their candidates with spending millions in Tax Payers money. The Primary Election just serve to force the smaller parties into further obscurity with tax supported advertisement.  If a party needs to pick who should run between more than one candidate, let them foot the bill.  They can draw straws, Indian Leg Wrestle or vote, but they should do it without Tax payer's dollars.

Mt Seorak

A few weeks ago, we took a trip to Mt Seroak in Northeast Korea. It was beautiful. Mt Seorak is one of the most popular national Parks here in Korea. it is only about 4 hours from Seoul and many people travel there. We were there for two days and stayed at a Korean Hotel right int he park.

It was gorgeous. The mountains were great and the tree colors were very, very nice. We took a few hikes to some waterfalls. They had a cable car up to the top of one Mountain which was interesting.

There were many Koreans there. The Koreans come in two kinds. Kind 1: The serious hiker. These are mostly men that have large packs that are moving very fast either up or down the mountain. Kind 2: The clueless Korean hiker. These are Koreans in flip-flops or high-heel boots that should not be hiking at all.

Here are some pictures also.

New Interpreters

I experienced one of the most fascinating things a few weeks ago.

Half of my office are Korean Air Force. Every six months they choose people to be interpreters for us and the upper leadership here in Korea. As every male must do some form of national service (military, police, hospital, etc.) these are relatively prestigious positions. They are working directly with US and ROK General Officers and high level diplomats. I was asked to help screen the potential candidates from an English language perspective. We interviewed about 50 candidates. Some of them were very young 20-21 years old and other were older 32-3 years old. many of them had been educated in the US, England or Australia and spoke very good English. Others had learned it here in Korea, but were still better at English than I am at Korean.

It was very impressive how some of them could go back and forth between English and Korean very easily (a necessary skill for being a translator). I was told by my Korean counterpart that although some of them spoke very good English their Korean was not so good as they had spent much of their life overseas. Speaking excellence Korean is just as important as excellent English.

I was mentally drained after the day. Trying to listen to each one and give them a fair assessment was hard, but very interesting and rewarding. I look forward to doing it again in 6 months.

Getting to Korea

Here is the quick version - VERY long.

We got a direct flight from Dulles to Inchon Airport. The flight was just about 15 hours. That is an awfully long time to be stuck in an aluminum tube. It is hard to say to your kids "We've been here for 7 hours and we are almost half way." We flew KAL and they did a great job with service, etc. We had individual entertainment systems for every seat so we could watch movies, play video games etc. at our leisure. Th dogs flew in the same plan with us, but down below. They don't let you take 70 pound dogs into the cabin with you.
Once we got to Inchon everyone was very helpful to the point of pushing our luggage and dogs around so that we could go through immigration, animal import and customs. They has free luggage carts and did not expect any kind of tip. What a change from the states.
The we started to drive and ran into the Seoul traffic that we had heard about. It was bad. it took us about 3 hours to get to the base. It made for a very long day, but all in all it went as smoothly as it could have.

Bringing You Up To Date

OK - I know that it has been a long time since I have been on here - I am sorry, but much has happened in my life since then.

First, we found out that we were being transfered to Osan AB, Korea and had to be there by the end of Sep. Second, we had my daughter's Bat Mitzvah before we moved, but after we moved out of our house. Third, we actually have moved to Korea. I will get to Korea in a little bit.

My daughter's Bat Mitzvah went VERY WELL. She did great. The whole family from both sides came in along with many dear friends. It was great. We had already moved out of our house so we stayed in the Hotel with everyone. It worked out fine. Fantastic friends of ours helped store stuff, move stuff, decorate stuff and even have a family party at their house. It was a great life event for our entire family.

Now back to Korea -- This assignment came completely out of the blue, but for a variety of reasons we decided to take this assignment. Things happened very fast - we sold our mini-van, packed up our household goods and rented our house. Everything got done, but some of it waited until the very last minutes - good that it got done, but hard on the nerves.

We have been in Korea for just over two weeks. I will post future blogs shortly about my impressions and the things that we are doing.

Thanks for staying with me.

C&O Canal National Park

My daughters and I went out to the C&O Canal National Park this morning and did the Billy Goat Section A hike. It was a beautiful day and a great hike. They advertise it as strenuous. Sometimes the NPS overstates this in an effort to dissuade those that are not in shape or prepared from trying hikes that are too much for them. They did not overstate this one. It was great fun bouldering and climbing over the rock like a true Mountain Goat.

Highly recommended!

F-22 Raptor

I am finally glad to see the Air Force starting to get over the F-22. The CSAF and SECAF wrote a letter to Congress asking them to not fund more F-22s. They are concerned that if Congress funds the extra F-22s, then something else is going to fall out of the Air Force budget. Do not get me wrong. The F-22 is a fantastic aircraft with capabilities that are unequaled anywhere else in the world and all things being equal I would strongly advocate fore more F-22, but things aren't equal. The world is a strange different place with threats that we would not have imagined in a war that we would not have chosen. There are many other areas that the Air Force needs to start focusing on and getting off of the F-22 is a great first step. Now let's see if the contractors and Air Force pundits can make the shift.