25 September 2007 - Snake Bay, all day. Culture, Afghan women, old planes and contentment

Today, again, I find myself at Snake Bay on an all day wait. Thinking, and with a little time to write. I'm in the health clinic, there's air conditioning, a fine view out the window, and a Gecko on the ceiling above me for good luck. The new laptop is working out fine, and I can tell already my life will be diarised as a series of sections, pages, subpages and clippings under Microsoft OneNote - the electronic equivalent of the top draw of the desk where everything gets stored, enroute to filing.

View from the staff room, Snake Bay (Millikapiti) Health Clinic

I've not flown for the past two days. We pilots have strict limits on the amount of hours or 'duty' we can work, and thanks to a busy week on Saturday I ran out of duty, and that didn't recover until today. I'm always keen to get back to work, if for no other reason than to see what's new - things can change overnight, for both better and worse. Usually it's just a little new gossip, some interesting little development that further defines the character of the place, whatever that may be. I'll elaborate, with some storytelling, to see if I can paint a picture of where I work, in an impressionist kind of way. No ruled lines or explicit details, but enough light and shade so that you can interpret it how you may. Not that I'm not bold enough to tell it directly as it is, but I'm not in the mood today to dive directly into finger pointing and deconstructive criticism. Read on, it's waffle time.

Once upon a lifetime ago I worked for another company, as a draftsperson, in a concrete box in Melbourne, drawing more plans for more concrete boxes. At least I think I did, but I have little proof... memories of that end of my life may just as well be dreams, unless someone out their has some physical evidence that it was true. At this place we underwent a process called 'cultural change', where boffins were brought in to dissect and analyse the unspoken, untold, unseen and previously unknown entity described to us as the corporations 'culture', which was vaguely comprised of such things as how we interacted, behaved, cooperated, conspired and coordinated the disparate collection of individuals that made up our workplace.

It was vaguely interesting at the time, but I had a sense it had greater importance than the level I assigned to it. Of course, it must have been very important, as the CEO pushed it strongly, the team leaders beneath him adopted it grudgingly, and we staff at the end of the food chain continued to do business as usual, with the inclusion of a few new surveys. It must have had some impact on me though, as parts of it are coming back to revisit me with this job. Again, I wish I'd paid more attention.

Sometimes I wonder about the culture of the place I work at the moment, and wish I could get those boffins back to dissect and analyse our operations. To explain, with the clarity of outsiders, why it is that we act the way we do, and how it might be that we could change it. What is out company 'culture', and what where does it lie in relation to the one we all wish we had, but can't seem to develop. Stronger leadership would help us get their, I guess, but I'm not really sure where 'there' is. I guess it would, for me, contain an emphasis on team work over the individual, a high focus on safety, a recognition that our work is part of our lives, but not all of our life. Greater emphasis would need to be placed on satisfying the customer, and a philosophy of less haste would need to be adopted.

I was going to go on to write about how I viewed the current culture - without the graphs, charts, statistics and technical lingo of a knowing boffin, but I guess it's best described as the opposite of the above. Take your pie chart and flip it, your graph and invert it, your statistics and deduct them, and that's where you'd end up, the opposite of the ideal that I described above. The place, the culture, is not ideal.

I no doubt contribute to this. We all do. We in the team are all working, I wish to believe but perhaps deceive myself, for the same cause. Can this mess be straightened out? Only from the top down, I believe. Perhaps this view is a cop out? Perhaps I can straighten out everything beneath me?

So the place is not ideal, but in other ways, ideal for me. I'm not exactly learning how the business should run by seeing ideal examples, but can imagine how it might be ideal by imagining the opposite of what I am getting. I need to understand what needs to be done, so I can work accordingly, without allowing any rot to set in.

So where am I at? Angry? Not really at anything significant, not at this time, not unless I waste the opportunities I do have. Disappointed? Certainly, given that I can see the potential opportunities, that would give me potential opportunities, going to waste. Frustrated? A little, but not a lot. Today I fly for 30 minutes to Snake Bay, and have eight hours to wait before returning the 30 minutes to Darwin. All day to wait, for one hour flying. Grumpy, usually, but last night I watched a documentary on the lives of women in Afghanistan, post Taliban. A country that's not got a lot to recommend it as a place to live, is worse if you are a woman. And if you're one of the many women who's been beaten with a stick to the point you feel the need to douse yourself in kerosene and try to end it by setting yourself alight, only to fail and have to live with the consequences, you're probably going to have a different definition of frustration, pain and suffering than I do. Sad, sobering perspective comes to us at times, today as I need it.

Snake Bay is the name of the airstrip, but the town it serves is Millikapitti, where the people are endlessly friendly, helpful, beautiful, and probably the opposite of all that when high on drugs and grog. True, some of them support teams other than Richmond or Geelong, but otherwise that I just wrote is true. I've flown here in a Cessna 310, my plane of choice at the moment. A plane full of 60's technology, 90's updates and enough patches to keep it flying for a few years yet. Though it's occurred to me recently, with increasing clarity, that one day this plane will reach the end of it's flying life - they all will - and the era of the oil burning, piston driven, twin engine, single pilot air transport will be no more, or ever again. Guaranteed. Weather that's because they've simply been worn out or the or the oil has run out remains to be seen. Sad for it, but perhaps exciting to see what, if anything, will replace it. I hope to be around to say, with conviction, of days just like today, that "those were the days".

I'm in Snake Bay, Millikapitti, today with another component of 'the intervention team', who are doing... something.... probably intervening. Sometimes it's political, other times medical, other times, I'm not stretching it to far to say, they're not doing anything either useful or otherwise. It's a difficult situation, that all participants are bearing, uncertain of where it's all heading, but all generally optimistic. I, of course, with all the wisdom of a pilot, can tell you immediately where it's all headed. No space to tell here, but refer to my blog entry 2015-05-07 for a rundown. Meanwhile, I feel endlessly blessed to be here, to be able to fly and live a life with only, relatively, trivial complaints. At the moment things are for me at their best, and I am savouring the moment, knowing I can't, don't want to, hang onto this forever, knowing that from here, things could, will go, either way.

Oh, and cheers to anybody reading this from Afgahanastan - hang in there.