Greetings from Guam

Hafa Dai to you all! In a rather strange and abrupt twist of direction I now find myself in an apartment three stories above the beach looking out on one of those tropical paradise scenes usually found in glossy photos. The sun has not quite yet risen so the air is still cool and a bit damp. Perfect for walking on the beach - especially for this Alaskan boy. It is Sunday and a few people are up and around but the tourists have not yet really come out to play. It is the locals getting ready for them.

Sunday two weeks ago my boss asked me to travel to Guam to participate in the creation of a proposal for a large multiple-award military construction contract. Our client needed someone with a logistics background who had the ability to write. My boss, being the ever-alert business development type that he is, volunteered me for the job. I was hired for an initial two-week period which is due to officially end in three days, but the chances are very strong that I will be asked to extend my stay for an additional period. I could be here as long as November 19, or longer if the submittal date is extended.

After an exhausting two-day journey I arrived and immediately went to work. The scale of this contract is quite large and deals with a form of logistics I have not had much experience with, so I spent the first week in an intensive learning mode gathering as much information as I could. I was not alone in this. The proposal team is made up of a Pacific-based construction company and a construction engineering company with global contracts. They have not worked together before so there has been a honeymoon period of a sort as they have gotten to know each other. Now, however, that time has passed and the real work has begun. We had been putting in 10+ hours a day but this next week will be even more intensive.

Consequently I have not had much time to sight-see and in fact today was the first day since I arrived that I have not gone into the office. I went for a walk on the beach and drove to the other side of the island to join our sister church there for a service. It has been a huge relief and I have enjoyed getting to know the island again.

Guam reminds me very much of Hawaii, only Hawaii as it was perhaps back in the 60's. There are about 170,000 guamanians and military on the island. The local native population is a mix of micronesian and spanish cultures going back to the 16th century. They speak a dialect called Chamorro and they call themselves by that name. They look like a darker version of Hawaiians and are very friendly. There are also two U.S. military bases on the island, the navy base at Apra Harbor down on the southwest side of the island and the very large air force base occupying the entire north end. Soon there will be a large marine base also up there. That is, in fact, the reason my client is here: to bid on the work associated with the construction of the base. The military is moving over 8,000 marines and their families here over the next 5 years which will swell the population by nearly 40,000.

Guam is an odd combination of Asia and the U.S. The lingua franca is nominally english and everybody speaks it to one degree or another, but japanese is also used. Guam is only 1550 air miles from Japan and nearly all the tourists are from there. It has been the "poor man's Hawaii" for the Japanese for several decades and a major destination for honeymooners. At the same time, Guam is situated close to Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and southwest Asia, and many citizens of those countries have immigrated to Guam. The news and other television programs are mostly from the United States but they are customized for this part of the global community. Guam is an American territory but it very much "faces east".

I will try to post a few more updates as my assignment here continues, but I do not know how consistent I will be about it. Hopefully I can make good progress on my part of the proposal this week and have a bit more free time in the evenings. Meanwhile it is easier to post pictures. You can go to here to see them.

Jed