My Year in Talas

Hello and welcome. My name is Gary Dunphy. I'm 43, a journeyman electrician out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and as of August 12, 1996 I live in Talas, Irad, which is in Central Asia, which is next to Kazakhstan, which is not next to anything you've heard of either. I signed a one year contract to work on the airfield lighting for the runway extension at Talas Air Base.

My wife Pam made me promise to keep a journal. My nephew set me up with this free web page so I could keep it here, and so she, and the rest of the family, and anybody else who's curious, can read it without me having to write the same letter 14 times. So here it is. One entry per day. That's the plan.

Ground rules:

• I will NOT write about the base, the work, the planes, or anything with a fence around it. Company rules and Uncle Sam's rules. Don't e-mail me asking. This page is about the TOWN and the PEOPLE.
• I'm an electrician, not a writer. Spelling is what it is.
• Opinions are mine, not my company's (who I am not naming), not the Air Force's, and definitely not the Territorial Government's.

Start with Days 1-3 and go from there. Frames are on the left if your browser does frames. If it doesn't, I'm sorry, my nephew said frames were "professional".