...but just for a little while.

I had to take a year off the forum as I got tired of the kids spamming otherwise worthwhile topics.

For those of you who care, I had a good year off. I fixed up my house, knocked up my wife, broke a collarbone and some ribs, had sinus surgery, LASEK (last week), dirtbiked like a madman, and backpacked around Asia for a month.

I'll be here for four months then maybe I'll be back in 2009.

-Tanky

lols

welcome back tanky! :D

enjoy ur stay :D gud to hav u back... and hw did u broke ur collar bone lolz

Welcome back.

Been along time.

There goes the forum. (joke)

I broke my collarbone with my head when I got tossed over the bars on a friend's dirtbike. It was one of the stupidest things I've ever done.



Thanks!

Sadly, my name no longer represents me or what I do. Maybe I'll change it to "Guy who cleans the house and mows the lawn and gets fat"

Tanky

welcome to forum

lolz naah tanky ..dun b dishearted ..:) anywayz gud 2 hav u back bro.. give us sum view abt new army stuff Pakistan's buyin man ..and y did u do dat stupid thing when u new dis gonna happen man :D

I really haven't been keeping up with "who purchased what" for the last year or so because I've refocused my "efforts" toward infantry and counter-insurgency stuff. As much as I like armor and everything about it, it's just the past now. My future is elsewhere.

Tanky

Welcome back. :-)

One more addition of a knowledgable member on this forum.

damn man. its been long. missed you. lot more kids around now :)

oh and how did that work on garage go. If i remember correctly, you were building some roof frame to carry weight and then you disappeared.

Thanks! It's good to be back, even if for a few months.

Tanky

Have you always been a mod? If not, congrads!

I ended up setting up some old 2x4s in the rafters to spread the weight. So far it hasn't fallen on me... but you never know.

(the real story is the wife saw me trying to build something in the rafters and stopped me before I got finished)

Tanky

Hi Tanker.

So, you used to operate an M1 Tank?

Back in the day I was an M1A1/M3A2 platoon leader and did an Iraq tour with the platoon.

Now I'm a kindler, gentler version of my previous self and sit at a desk.

Tanky

well ...tanky hw r u feelin nw man :D hpe better and who told u to act over smart lolz ;)

anywayz .. keep contributing as ur contribution wud b vital for this forum!

hpe dis year u learnt alot lolz

one of da best signatures lolz "PowerPoint Warriors! Chairborne forever!" <---

oh! bummer!












Just kiddin'.... good to see ure still kickin' around... :)

Tanky you're back! Long time no talk. Welcome back.

Welcome back!

welcome back Tanky :) miss the Abrams?

The larger and more complex the machine the bigger the pain in the ass it is.

I'm on foot now and it's a nice change (when I'm not sitting at my desk that is).

Tanky

Good to see you back, now along with some useful opinions we can also enjoy some real great humor:D

Welcome back:)

Welcome back. So you left the forces or doing duty in administration department.

this seriusly worries me to a point that i must ask for elaboration tanky....


any ways,


welcome back, yous loss was felt quite a lot, especialy when stupid kids started topics talking about a shoulder fired DU round.... and stuff of that calibre....


welcome back old friend:D


_________________________________________________
wanted to add after i read rest of the threads, are you still in the forces? (in the desk section)

Welcome Back

Welcome back old friend and we missed your input in the army section not to mention that sense of humour. I hope you can post more often. Hey incidentally we had another US tanker come on called “Z raver” but he posts more on Pakistani forces you would have got on quite well.

Look whos back Mr Tanky!! Nice to see ya back tank.

did u serve in any actual conflict like Gulf War I or Gulf War II and if you did, did you score any kills?

Things sure have calmed down around here. Yes, the Pakistan/India rivalry is still there but it seems like everyone is playing much nicer than before. It also seems like the dozens of Chinese kids with 4 posts have disappeared too. Did something happen while I was gone?

I'm not sure how to adjust to this new kinder, gentler, PDF.

Tanky

hmm well July/August were very very intense months in Pakistan so everybody around here has been taking a break, including me. However terrorists in Pakistan are not taking any breaks.

Not at all! People have been asked to tone down on the swearing, it does get abit out of hand and sound silly.

But by no means is there any censorship! Feel free to lampoon whoever you might, with you're diatribe! (preferably an Indian) and we shall join in!

You could also use parlance of Yoda, as a insulting Euphemism, very effective for some strange reason against Indians (for some reason most speak in that manner as well!).

Example:

Monkey You are.
TFSU (the f*** shut up)
Stupid your argument is.


I'm sure you'll soon get the hang of it.

lol..yh u will have hard time adjusting to kinder PDF...but dont worry..we are all pretty tensed up cos of ur presence in afghanistan..and the effect it is having on pakistans peace..
so come prepared buddy....i was missing your reasoning/fights/logics what ever u cal it..

let me call it fight to warm u up already :)

welcome back.

Welcome back Tanky. Seems like you have it all planned out for next few years (time you'll spend on forum, time you won't)
Have fun while you are here

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." -Robert Burns

Tanky

congrats on knocking up the missus.

whens it due? ... shouldi dare to guess 4 months?

Thanks... it was a planned but unexpected event.

She is due in April or May.

Tanky

Hooray! Where did you go in Asia?

Good to see you back tanky.

How did u get that collar bone fixed? Totally f-cked up.

The wife and I spend 25 days in Thailand, Laos, and Nepal. I'd been to Thailand and Nepal before but my wife had never been to Asia.

I'd have to say I liked Laos the best. It was very peaceful and everyone was super nice and super lazy.



The whole thing is a dipshit move on my part, both breaking it and not getting it fixed correctly. My arm hangs kinda funny and the collarbone set at about 45 degrees instead of about 15 degrees. The doc said he'd have to rebreak it then pin it back together.

I'm way to busy to be gimpy. It'll have to wait a few years or until I rebreak it myself.

Tanky

Nice to have you back tank,

This forum wasn't quite the same without you

I hope Laos hasn't become "touristy" like her neighbours. Charming country when I was back there 10 years ago.

Hope the best for you, your wife and your young un' on the way.

Thanks!

Vientaine has become a little Bangkok, complete with hookers and bars catering to drunken British tourists. Louang Prabang may be better than 10 years ago. There's a lot of money there now and everything is tidy and well restored without being over run with tourists... at least in the off season.

In my next life I'm going to spend a whole summer there motorcycling around the place and seeing what there is to see.

Tanky

Welcome back .. nice to see some sane heads coming back.

You came to Thailand?

I've been living here for a long long time already.




I'd say things are better now in Bangkok. Hookers are not so much in public anymore and they have their own zones. Probably where there is a farang, there is a whore.

I ended up in Thailand for about a week total. It was our first stop in Asia and it took a few days to get used to the time change and the humidity.



We ended up staying at a hotel in an area frequented by Arab tourists with a sex industry that catered to them. Even the whore houses' names were in Arabic. The guys would have their burka-clad wives wait outside of the "massage parlor" which they got a steam n'cream. Very odd.

I was pretty interested in the whole deal but my wife wasn't so thrilled.

Tanky

Good to see you back Tanky. Welcome again.

I presume you stayed around Nana, where lots of Arab tourists are. Incidently, thats one of the place where Russian hookers are in abundance. So are the thais, but the Russian and Central Asian chix have a monopoly over there.

Hehe. Its probably a genuine massage without the extra services, I guess.

Hey Tanky, long time no speak mate. I hope u r doing good--nice to have u back.

And on another subject your President Bush is visiting Sydney and he's managed to have the whole city caged!! LOL.

Congrats Tanky! Glad to know you will become a dad (if you are not already).

So now you are another fighting keyboardist like all of us? Or still in the guard? Going back to Iraq anytime soon.

BTW Always forgot to ask you, you were in 1 Armoured or 1 Cav Div?

My wife is due April/May of 08 and I'm still in the guard. Office work seems to suck the very life out of me and I'm done with it. I really doubt I'll do Iraq again and another rotation would be horrible because I'd be doing the thing I do now only without A/C and being able to go home at night. Staff work is horrible. It's a good thing I have another job lined up as a door-to-door strawberry salesman.

I was with 1AD back when it was in Germany.



I don't really care either way about Arabs or hookers, or even a combo of hookers serving Arabs, but I felt out of my element and there were limited "things to do." Hookers where I live is a "behind closed doors" thing and with it out in the open and with my wife there it felt a little odd. In my next life when I get to travel more I'll take a trip to see the rest of Thailand, maybe on a motorcycle, and not in the summer.

Tanky

When I was in Laos, I ventured far from Vientiane.

Not good for your intestines.

I was very afraid of getting some sort of intestinal cootie, not only for the discomfort, but it also ruins the trip. From what I gathered, Laos has made huge strides in hygiene at least in the tourist areas. They must have realized that tourists spend more money when out and about and much less when they're confined to the can.

I was suprised at how little communism was visible. Granted, the government is still very oppressive, but the free market was booming. Whatever the laws are there, they were not enforced much at all.

It was a great country... lots of fun... great people... and I'd go back in a heartbeat.

Tanky

I know for a fact that a lot of Burma's military is plainclothes...so they fit in with the general civvies really well.

It could be the same thing in Laos for all we know. i.e maintaining a presence, albeit a discreet one....though ready to take down a "disturbance" should it arise.

I am happy for Laos if they have progressed since my last visit. People like me are in no position to tell others "don't change...stay isolated so that a few backpackers like me will have untouched areas of the world to visit and oogle at the locals". People forget that it often means keeping people mired in poverty.

Communism does not fit into the asian psyche. It has to be enforced. When you had red china, you had an oppressive govt that purged its own people several times.

When you are communist in name and official ideology....but little else....you have countries like Laos where the lower end industries are free market....because they are impossible to regulate. This was the case with India and China even when they were following socialist ideologies....and is why we see both communities doing so well overseas in free market environments and increasingly so in their own countries as markets are embraced by their govts.