Helicopter Inspections

Eevery six months, we do helicopter inspections of our contracted helicoper company to esnure safety of flight for our personnel and cargo. Our helicopter company has grown in the commercial arena leaps and bounds since I first flew on one of their aircraft in 1991, but many things remain unchanged. 

The helicopter company is a Vietnamese state owned enterprise (SOE) (a sort of hybrid between a government orgaization and a commercial entity).  These SOE's were born out of the communist system and offer a government entity the opportunity to make capital from commercial business with the government assets they are assigned.  Our servicing aircraft are Mi-172s, that look much like Mi-8s and Mi-17s. They are Russian manufactured aircraft, and the pilots are military personnel transferred to the commercial company.  Most of the pilots are senior colonels in their late forties and early fifties who cut their teeth in Russian training and Cambodian warfare.

I just finished interpreting for a group of inspectors at the helicopter company today, and in closing we drank copious amounts of vodka... Russian vodka.  Toasts were made to those inspectors who were here on their last inspection, the inspectors who would return on the next trip, the new facilities at the company, the success of the inspection.  And as we ran out of righteous toasts, we were forced to toast every new menu item that arrived at the table.  Needless to say, I am still "toasted" as I sit here writing this blog. And, I am writing this blog for fear I would otherwise delve into real work and find myself un-screwing things I did today, tomorrow.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I found myself sitting at the table reminiscing about the early days when I first arrived in Hanoi. There were dishes on the tables and smells in the air that took me back some twenty one years to when I first arrived in Hanoi. The simple pleasures of eating simple foods and drinking simple drinks.  The uncomplicated banter that military men talked under the now cold, misty, and cloudy skies of Hanoi.

I won't shed vodka tears over years gone by, but I do feel that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach wondering if I spent my youth the best way I could.