the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

Before I even found an apartment here, I was drawn into work posthaste, where I was put on shifts presumably doing CIS support. I remember commenting to a friend that I wasn't really qualified for anything yet,* but I'd do the best I could. She responded, "Oh, you're qualified. You're a native speaker."

* NATO sends us to courses before we are qualified to do various jobs. To date, I'm still grossly unqualified, if that's the yardstick.

I laughed. I thought she was joking...in a sense that pokes at the truth at the bottom of the joke, I mean. I could see how being a native English speaker is a plus in this environment, but was that really a "qualification" of some sort?

Turns out, it is. Now that I'm inappropriately qualified (I've not yet had the formal schooling, but I've been several months in the school of gross confusion and morbid embarassment, which has to earn me some points) and thus have many other things commanding my time, I learned that being a native speaker is indeed a qualification for a much-needed special duty.

They call it "NS Duty," appropriately enough. This is where you attend all of the infernal briefings and discussions by all people in all places of all ranks and just listen, and stand ready to explain any random "what did he mean?" questions to the brass. There is an implicit assumption that you, the native speaker, understand what the other "native speaker" is saying, of course.

I don't, necessarily. I'm not good with acronyms, which in the military, easily fill at least 1/4th but more probably 1/3rd of any given conversation. Acronymns are, by definition, pronounceable abbreviations, like, ya know, SCUBA.* But I use them in their accepted military sense: an abbreviation that is used as a word whether it's pronounceable or not. Like TDY (temporary duty) and PCS (permanent change of station) and TLA (three-letter acronym).

* Something** Combined Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

** Sinister? Subsumed? Sublime? Scary? Stupid? Surreal? Like I said, I'm not good with acronyms.

So in one briefing, one guy (a American colonel or general I think--the focus was bad and his rank wasn't identified) kept talking about K4. I made notes, trying to work it out. I know C4 is Command and Control Computers and Communications. So what's K4?

When he was almost finished, I worked out that he meant K-FOR, as in Kosovo Forces. AAAaaaaaaah. :roll:

But this is just an example of how worthless a native speaker can be.

A propos of nothing, just how many honking cruise ships dock in Izmir at once?! This has the be the third I've watched leaving in the last two days, and I've no doubt missed one or two.

Anyway...we listened to a briefing by colonel or general who was probably from Alabama, and I thought for a while that I'd have to explain the whole speech to my German colonel. Thankfully, he wasn't much interested in what that commander had to report.

Turns out, I'm just sort of a walking dictionary of random words and idioms. The boss turned to me in the middle of the second briefing and said, "What's that word? a-tro-kius?" I said, "Atrocious. It means horrible. Unspeakably awful." He nodded, thankfully, because I was about to dumb it down: "Bad. Very, very bad."

And I can explain jokes, of which there are many in the briefings among the brass. This comes to me as a delightful surprise, particularly since I'm doomed to occasionally serve this duty which entails being stuck in briefings until the boss releases me (today was fairly short, thanks to the holiday. I only wasted my entire morning in briefings that didn't concern me).

At one point, the big boss (the one with the stars) made a frustrated comment about how some bunkers were still in the same place, and they hadn't moved. His boss--not an English speaker--responded: "Yes but, we use the same reasoning to argue that the sun will come up tomorrow, just because it did for the last billion years. That's still no guarantee it'll come up."

I was the only one in the room chuckling.

All right all right. I was desperate for entertainment, and that did the trick. My German boss either didn't get it or didn't think it was funny. In any case, he didn't ask me. But I stand ready to translate.

That's me. Native English Speaker. Faster than a speeding buffet, able to leap tall idioms in a single bumble.

But at least I look good doing it.

d