My Bachelor Pad in Osan, Korea

I arrived in Osan Air Force Base in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in June 1982. Originally sent there on a one year remote tour as a Korean linguist. The training cycle to become a fully qualified operational linguist was very long. It started with six weeks of English language training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas (end of 1980). The Air Force found they needed to teach trainees some of the basics of grammar and language structure before they could begin to teach them a foreign language. This class ended just before Christmas in 1980, and I was able to go back to New York on leave before reporting in to my next class. The next big hurdle was a full year of Korean language training at the Presidio of Monterrey, California, where I spent all of 1981. This was followed by another six months of technical training at Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo Texas which ended in about June of 1982. When I finally got to Korea I had to go through about eight months of on-the-job training to become certified first as a Category II (semi-qualified) and then Category III (fully-qualified) operator. So, finally, by about February of 1983, more or less when this photo was taken, and about two and a half years after the process was started, I was dubbed "qualified" to work alone - and my first tour in Korea was almost up. I decided to extend for another year until the summer of 1984 in order to rack up some real experience, because up until then it had all been training, training, training. This photo was taken by my good friend Bob Flyzik - we were both on "Charlie Flight" together in Korea, and we hung out together all the time. Bob Flyzik is easily one of the smartest people I've ever met. Remind me to write an article about the games of "assassin" we played in downtown Songtan.