Items of note for the week:
Spent most of the week preparing myself for the weekend, and trying to say hi, and bye to the proud, the few, the "subject matter experts" that were still here for work. Many of them, I knew from my previous work, and for the most part, being able to hang out with them as I transitioned over to working in Saudi was one of the big reasons why I feel like I'm doing OK over here. It's always nice to have something familiar to cling on to, when you go to a big new scary place. We didn't go anywhere too crazy for the dinners or anything, actually we ended up going to some fairly familiar places, and one new place. Grillo's is a kinda fast food place, serving I suppose some Arabic, some American, and some Italian food. It seems to me that most of the places here have some of the problems that make some of the restaurants really bad on that show "Kitchen Nightmares." They have a ridiculous amount of food on the menu, with no apparent theme. Super cheap though, so no big deal. I tried a new side salad called Fattoush, very crunchy. It sticks with the concept of everything here must have a higher proportion of carbs than anything else. Tasty though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fattoush
Had a traditional Shwarma, and that was all there was to it in the for the restaurant. I'm not huge on sweets, but the guys I were with do, so we dropped off at Baskin Robin's while we were there. From last week's note, one of the guys that was at the beach camp, the guy who threw the party for last week, decided to play ball in his basketball cowboy boots. Didn't work so well, especially when he twisted his ankle. Ouch. He hurt it pretty bad, and pretty much limped the entire last week of work he had over here.
(Funny side note, the language barrier can be a bit tricky, or funny depending on what side you're on. He went to the work doctor to see if the doctor had anything to help him with the pain. So he takes off his boot, and shoe, and pointed to an area on his foot, and says to the doctor that he hurt his ankle, and it hurts the most right here. So the doctor looks, at the foot, then at him, and then pokes right there. Friends' response. OWWW!, why did you do that?! Doctor goes and gets another doctor, and he proceeds to almost do the same thing, but friend is fast enough to pull his foot away this time. Long story short, pain killers over here, even the numbing gel is much more powerful. Nice. )
Dinner was at the Steak House, and Sailor's for the guys. Food still good at both places. One of the Saudi national guys came with us to steak house as well. He forgot to check to see if the ketchup lid was securely closed before he shook it like a Polaris. Like fate always has it, the ketchup ends up right on my crotch, and no amount of wiping would keep me from appearing that I wet my pants. Plus you don't want to be the guy rubbing his crotch at dinner.
I wish my friends that were here temporarily here the best, and thank you for all the help, inside, but especially outside of work.
Bahrain:
So I'll start off by just saying details may be blurry, for the weekend. There was a great deal of drinking involved. I think. I dunno, I can't remember the details, it was kinda blurry. :-)
Bahrain is an island about 1-1/2 hour away from where we are. It's its own separate country, and is connected to KSA via a bridge. It honestly reminded me very much of the old section of Las Vegas. It's the city of basically doing whatever you can't do in Saudi. So bacon, alcohol, shorts, and women minus their Abayas.
And what happens there, definitely stays there. We leave the compound around 6:00 AM, drive the 1.5 hours, and cross over. It's a slow down over there, and you realize very quickly that things move at their own pace, and no matter what you do, unless you know someone, will continue to move at that pace. We took about another 1.5 hours to reach Bahrain after we enter the customs area. No line either. Just had to wait for coffee, tea, pee, prayer, chit chat, etc...
No big deal, no one's in a huge rush to get there. Well, correct that. I'm not in a huge rush. First drop off is a place called Ric's. The place is owned by some owner who originally is from Oklahoma. So nothing but comfort food. Kinda pricey for the area. Oh, to get everyone confused / in the know, here's the exchange rates:
US - Saudi Riyals 1 dollar = 3.75 Riyal. (Basically divide everything by ~4)
Saudi Riyals - Bahrain Dinar = 10 Riyal = 1 BD
US - BD: 2.65 dollar per BD. (Basically multiply by 3)
I got biscuits and sausage gravy, with a side of bacon. Cup of coffee as well. Total after tip was 7 BD. 21 bucks for breakfast. Sausage was good. The driver ordered something that was actually tastier. I traded one piece of bacon for one piece of tocino. Tocino, which is spanish for bacon, is filipino for delicious pork with a little bit of skin and fat on it. Should have gone with that.
http://www.pinoyrecipe.net/pork-tocino-sweetened-cured-pork-recipe/#axzz1oviHfEkL
Alright, so next we need to go pick up the rental car. The island is pretty small, and you could drive anywhere in about 10 minutes. There are taxis available. However, the problem is that there are other people driving on the road. Specifically crazy Bahrainian drivers. And Saudi drivers. Everyone is on their cell phone, texting, talking, making double lane turns, and running red lights for grins. Granted, the light system is a bit different. Sequence is Red - Yellow - Green - Red. I guess it means to look for people running red lights before you go.
So, specifically, the costs of electronics is higher in the middle east, than it is in other parts of the world. Therefore, things that can be done by cheap labor will be done before you buy a part that can do it quicker. Good example is car washing. At least in Saudi, someone will wash your car for 10 Riyals. Not a bad deal. They do it with a damp cloth, sometimes there's even soap in the water. But of course they can't rinse, unless you go to somewhere nicer. Most places on the street get their cars washed with wet rags. At our work, there's a person, maybe two, who's job it is to wash the cars everyday. At least he gets soap, a hose, and sponges. That's a luxury. Back to the car. Cars all look pretty nice from the outside, I mean they get cleaned a lot, probably every day. However, the inside is going to get a little more wear and tear. It's hard to vacuum a car, without a vacuum. It's called a broom. That doesn't work well on dirt, or food, or anything really. So most of the cars are sticky, and dirty on the inside. We spent quite a while trying to find a car that wasn't too sticky to get into. It worked out ok. I've been told though in the summer, when it's just stupid hot, all the cars smell like sweat and b.o. Gross.
Cruzin down the road, we drive around getting our bearings. Drove by the Grand Mosque, and start towards the "Specs" store. The store opens at 12:00 PM, and there are no labels on the building. In fact it looks more like a warehouse. It's not very big, maybe the size of one of those sketchy liquor stores you see on the wrong side of town. But, there's only two in all of Bahrain, so we get what we need. I get a bottle of Jack, the other guys get some beer, and gin. It's pricey, but hey. The bottle of Jack is 21bd. I don't quite put together that Jack's pretty cheap in the states, well, because it's made in the states. It's considered a premium beverage over here. Eh, oh well. We head to the hotel, it's a Marriott, pretty nice, split between 3 people, so not too bad. We're on the 14th floor, and have a very nice view of the city.
It's lunch time now, and we head out to eat, at the hard rock cafe. Pretty neat place, they have beer on the menu, and it's overall a good time. The burger's pretty tasty, the waitress seems tired of all the ex-pats hitting on her, so we leave her alone. Almost all the people we meet that are in customer service, waitresses, hotel receptionists, are all Filipino women. They all speak English very well, and maybe it's only been a month, but they're definitely a sight for sore eyes. We drive around, check out some of the sights, drive by some of the more infamous places, I won't get into that, haha? We BS around, and head out to dinner.
Bushido:
http://www.bushido.com.bh/
What can I say about this place. The place is gorgeous. It reminds me exactly of those places you see in Vegas. Just over the top, and gorgeous. Very dark though, that's part of the ambiance, which I don't get. It hides the beauty of the food. Anyways, we are served Sake from a bamboo bottle thing, and order a little bit of everything. Some teppanyaki, chicken skewers, sashimi, and sushi. Nothing too crazy, just stick with the basics. All done very well. Nothing like Uchi over in Houston, but pretty tasty. The bar upstairs is amazing, and fully stocked. I had a white Russian. No milk though, all cream. Definitely rich.
We go hit the night clubs as well. Won't go into the details again, it's another haha? moment. Long story short, the drinks were nuts, 7.50 bd for a whiskey sour (whiskey is an import, don't forget) I got a smoke off of a filipino dude, who was drinking one of those long island iced teas that are blue. I can't remember what they're called, but they're strong. Good for him. Very limp wrist-ed guy though. But then again, many of them are like that. Meh, cultural thing.
Next day, pretty quiet, hung over, breakfast bar was complimentary, the mall was huge, and didn't shut down during prayer time. We walked around, went to the movie theater. It was quite up to date. Saw "Act of Valor." Very intense movie, acting was what you expect from real Navy Seals. It was very much like a video game, i.e. first person views, heavy breathing, explosions. I liked it, critics didn't like it, but then again they're looking for character development, and deep value. This is an "America, fuq yeah!" movie. I'll agree with that. We then proceeded to get some hookah, i.e. sheesha, i.e. hubbley bubbly, and dinner. Schwarma again, and Iranian beef. Not that different than fajita meat in flavor. If you haven't smoked sheesha, it's an experience. Very bad for you, the water "filters" a little bit, but mainly cools down the smoke so you can smoke more. All flavored. We got the double apple. Very sweet. An hour session is the equivalent of smoking like 5 cigarettes or something like that. There's a valve on the hookah that increases/decreases the amount of air that mixes with the smoke before you pull. Yeah. Keep that valve fairly open. You'll get light headed in no time. It was difficult to stand up after an hour or so. Meh, I'll do that once in a while, not all the time. We got a text message that there was a major protest next to the mall we were just at. Lucky for timing I suppose. I was pretty much spent at that time, and we proceeded back home. Now I won't get into the other part of this story with one of the guys from work. He's a very cool guy, young, and is taking advantage of his Saudi citizenship. He told me a few of his perks, but I have to verify with some other people before I post what he says. Basically he's getting paid mad cash. I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but I think this entry's long enough. Some of the pictures are posted on flickr, and I didn't get to take many touristy photos this weekend, but I'm sure I'll be back to take more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Letter to *********
Hey homey, hope all is going well over there. I'm glad I got a hold of you on facebook the other day. For some reason, that really made my day. We didn't talk too much about anything serious, or much at all, but it was nice to see that you're still that awesome person. I hope you're feeling better over that "oopsie" the other day, and learned from it. Same thing for the other person. That's the difference between experience and mistakes, a smart person doesn't repeat experiences, they learn from them. Or something deep like that. Anyways, the acrobatic yoga pictures boggle and do other things for me that are inappropriate to say in the blog, but in either case, I find the concept amazing. That takes balance, strength, and a lot of practice. I'm glad you're advancing in your yoga instructor skills. Did you ever finish that paper? Did you start writing it? Haha, I'm sure you did. I see that you're doing a photo shoot with the blue bonnet flowers. I'd expect the pictures to come out amazingly. I hear the weather has been a little wetter down there, so that's always good for the flowers. That picture of your little one in the flowers is always neat, and I hope you've been doing that every year, so you can see her grow, in the bluebonnets. I'm hoping you're spending good quality time with here over there, as she learns from mom, and gets more and more independent.
For some reason I was looking through my email, and I saw my old myspace link. I wrote a poem in it, surprisingly. It was actually pretty nice. I'm surprised I wrote that. I also wrote some pretty silly angry rant on it too. It's kinda funny to read both of them, and still know that I wrote both of them. I hope it's not a sign of being bipolar. They were 3 months apart. I'll post the poem next week I think. It should be a quiet weekend this week I think. I spent way too much money last weekend in Bahrain, all on fun things, but I can't be doing that every weekend. Just like you, I got my goals that I gotta keep on track for. None of them are very exciting, and I'll probably blow em on vacation, but for the time being, I'm saving up for something.
Well, take care, holler at me if you see me online, and I'll do the same. I think one time you said something like you tend to get worked up about things, I don't know why, but you have the exact opposite effect on me. Getting a chance to talk to you, or whatever erases any frustrations, or anxiety of the day. It's a great feeling, and although you may say you're not doing much, it's pretty cool. Thanks for that, and keep being that amazing person we all know you are!
-Huy
Spent most of the week preparing myself for the weekend, and trying to say hi, and bye to the proud, the few, the "subject matter experts" that were still here for work. Many of them, I knew from my previous work, and for the most part, being able to hang out with them as I transitioned over to working in Saudi was one of the big reasons why I feel like I'm doing OK over here. It's always nice to have something familiar to cling on to, when you go to a big new scary place. We didn't go anywhere too crazy for the dinners or anything, actually we ended up going to some fairly familiar places, and one new place. Grillo's is a kinda fast food place, serving I suppose some Arabic, some American, and some Italian food. It seems to me that most of the places here have some of the problems that make some of the restaurants really bad on that show "Kitchen Nightmares." They have a ridiculous amount of food on the menu, with no apparent theme. Super cheap though, so no big deal. I tried a new side salad called Fattoush, very crunchy. It sticks with the concept of everything here must have a higher proportion of carbs than anything else. Tasty though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fattoush
Had a traditional Shwarma, and that was all there was to it in the for the restaurant. I'm not huge on sweets, but the guys I were with do, so we dropped off at Baskin Robin's while we were there. From last week's note, one of the guys that was at the beach camp, the guy who threw the party for last week, decided to play ball in his basketball cowboy boots. Didn't work so well, especially when he twisted his ankle. Ouch. He hurt it pretty bad, and pretty much limped the entire last week of work he had over here.
(Funny side note, the language barrier can be a bit tricky, or funny depending on what side you're on. He went to the work doctor to see if the doctor had anything to help him with the pain. So he takes off his boot, and shoe, and pointed to an area on his foot, and says to the doctor that he hurt his ankle, and it hurts the most right here. So the doctor looks, at the foot, then at him, and then pokes right there. Friends' response. OWWW!, why did you do that?! Doctor goes and gets another doctor, and he proceeds to almost do the same thing, but friend is fast enough to pull his foot away this time. Long story short, pain killers over here, even the numbing gel is much more powerful. Nice. )
Dinner was at the Steak House, and Sailor's for the guys. Food still good at both places. One of the Saudi national guys came with us to steak house as well. He forgot to check to see if the ketchup lid was securely closed before he shook it like a Polaris. Like fate always has it, the ketchup ends up right on my crotch, and no amount of wiping would keep me from appearing that I wet my pants. Plus you don't want to be the guy rubbing his crotch at dinner.
I wish my friends that were here temporarily here the best, and thank you for all the help, inside, but especially outside of work.
Bahrain:
So I'll start off by just saying details may be blurry, for the weekend. There was a great deal of drinking involved. I think. I dunno, I can't remember the details, it was kinda blurry. :-)
Bahrain is an island about 1-1/2 hour away from where we are. It's its own separate country, and is connected to KSA via a bridge. It honestly reminded me very much of the old section of Las Vegas. It's the city of basically doing whatever you can't do in Saudi. So bacon, alcohol, shorts, and women minus their Abayas.
And what happens there, definitely stays there. We leave the compound around 6:00 AM, drive the 1.5 hours, and cross over. It's a slow down over there, and you realize very quickly that things move at their own pace, and no matter what you do, unless you know someone, will continue to move at that pace. We took about another 1.5 hours to reach Bahrain after we enter the customs area. No line either. Just had to wait for coffee, tea, pee, prayer, chit chat, etc...
No big deal, no one's in a huge rush to get there. Well, correct that. I'm not in a huge rush. First drop off is a place called Ric's. The place is owned by some owner who originally is from Oklahoma. So nothing but comfort food. Kinda pricey for the area. Oh, to get everyone confused / in the know, here's the exchange rates:
US - Saudi Riyals 1 dollar = 3.75 Riyal. (Basically divide everything by ~4)
Saudi Riyals - Bahrain Dinar = 10 Riyal = 1 BD
US - BD: 2.65 dollar per BD. (Basically multiply by 3)
I got biscuits and sausage gravy, with a side of bacon. Cup of coffee as well. Total after tip was 7 BD. 21 bucks for breakfast. Sausage was good. The driver ordered something that was actually tastier. I traded one piece of bacon for one piece of tocino. Tocino, which is spanish for bacon, is filipino for delicious pork with a little bit of skin and fat on it. Should have gone with that.
http://www.pinoyrecipe.net/pork-tocino-sweetened-cured-pork-recipe/#axzz1oviHfEkL
Alright, so next we need to go pick up the rental car. The island is pretty small, and you could drive anywhere in about 10 minutes. There are taxis available. However, the problem is that there are other people driving on the road. Specifically crazy Bahrainian drivers. And Saudi drivers. Everyone is on their cell phone, texting, talking, making double lane turns, and running red lights for grins. Granted, the light system is a bit different. Sequence is Red - Yellow - Green - Red. I guess it means to look for people running red lights before you go.
So, specifically, the costs of electronics is higher in the middle east, than it is in other parts of the world. Therefore, things that can be done by cheap labor will be done before you buy a part that can do it quicker. Good example is car washing. At least in Saudi, someone will wash your car for 10 Riyals. Not a bad deal. They do it with a damp cloth, sometimes there's even soap in the water. But of course they can't rinse, unless you go to somewhere nicer. Most places on the street get their cars washed with wet rags. At our work, there's a person, maybe two, who's job it is to wash the cars everyday. At least he gets soap, a hose, and sponges. That's a luxury. Back to the car. Cars all look pretty nice from the outside, I mean they get cleaned a lot, probably every day. However, the inside is going to get a little more wear and tear. It's hard to vacuum a car, without a vacuum. It's called a broom. That doesn't work well on dirt, or food, or anything really. So most of the cars are sticky, and dirty on the inside. We spent quite a while trying to find a car that wasn't too sticky to get into. It worked out ok. I've been told though in the summer, when it's just stupid hot, all the cars smell like sweat and b.o. Gross.
Cruzin down the road, we drive around getting our bearings. Drove by the Grand Mosque, and start towards the "Specs" store. The store opens at 12:00 PM, and there are no labels on the building. In fact it looks more like a warehouse. It's not very big, maybe the size of one of those sketchy liquor stores you see on the wrong side of town. But, there's only two in all of Bahrain, so we get what we need. I get a bottle of Jack, the other guys get some beer, and gin. It's pricey, but hey. The bottle of Jack is 21bd. I don't quite put together that Jack's pretty cheap in the states, well, because it's made in the states. It's considered a premium beverage over here. Eh, oh well. We head to the hotel, it's a Marriott, pretty nice, split between 3 people, so not too bad. We're on the 14th floor, and have a very nice view of the city.
It's lunch time now, and we head out to eat, at the hard rock cafe. Pretty neat place, they have beer on the menu, and it's overall a good time. The burger's pretty tasty, the waitress seems tired of all the ex-pats hitting on her, so we leave her alone. Almost all the people we meet that are in customer service, waitresses, hotel receptionists, are all Filipino women. They all speak English very well, and maybe it's only been a month, but they're definitely a sight for sore eyes. We drive around, check out some of the sights, drive by some of the more infamous places, I won't get into that, haha? We BS around, and head out to dinner.
Bushido:
http://www.bushido.com.bh/
What can I say about this place. The place is gorgeous. It reminds me exactly of those places you see in Vegas. Just over the top, and gorgeous. Very dark though, that's part of the ambiance, which I don't get. It hides the beauty of the food. Anyways, we are served Sake from a bamboo bottle thing, and order a little bit of everything. Some teppanyaki, chicken skewers, sashimi, and sushi. Nothing too crazy, just stick with the basics. All done very well. Nothing like Uchi over in Houston, but pretty tasty. The bar upstairs is amazing, and fully stocked. I had a white Russian. No milk though, all cream. Definitely rich.
We go hit the night clubs as well. Won't go into the details again, it's another haha? moment. Long story short, the drinks were nuts, 7.50 bd for a whiskey sour (whiskey is an import, don't forget) I got a smoke off of a filipino dude, who was drinking one of those long island iced teas that are blue. I can't remember what they're called, but they're strong. Good for him. Very limp wrist-ed guy though. But then again, many of them are like that. Meh, cultural thing.
Next day, pretty quiet, hung over, breakfast bar was complimentary, the mall was huge, and didn't shut down during prayer time. We walked around, went to the movie theater. It was quite up to date. Saw "Act of Valor." Very intense movie, acting was what you expect from real Navy Seals. It was very much like a video game, i.e. first person views, heavy breathing, explosions. I liked it, critics didn't like it, but then again they're looking for character development, and deep value. This is an "America, fuq yeah!" movie. I'll agree with that. We then proceeded to get some hookah, i.e. sheesha, i.e. hubbley bubbly, and dinner. Schwarma again, and Iranian beef. Not that different than fajita meat in flavor. If you haven't smoked sheesha, it's an experience. Very bad for you, the water "filters" a little bit, but mainly cools down the smoke so you can smoke more. All flavored. We got the double apple. Very sweet. An hour session is the equivalent of smoking like 5 cigarettes or something like that. There's a valve on the hookah that increases/decreases the amount of air that mixes with the smoke before you pull. Yeah. Keep that valve fairly open. You'll get light headed in no time. It was difficult to stand up after an hour or so. Meh, I'll do that once in a while, not all the time. We got a text message that there was a major protest next to the mall we were just at. Lucky for timing I suppose. I was pretty much spent at that time, and we proceeded back home. Now I won't get into the other part of this story with one of the guys from work. He's a very cool guy, young, and is taking advantage of his Saudi citizenship. He told me a few of his perks, but I have to verify with some other people before I post what he says. Basically he's getting paid mad cash. I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but I think this entry's long enough. Some of the pictures are posted on flickr, and I didn't get to take many touristy photos this weekend, but I'm sure I'll be back to take more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Letter to *********
Hey homey, hope all is going well over there. I'm glad I got a hold of you on facebook the other day. For some reason, that really made my day. We didn't talk too much about anything serious, or much at all, but it was nice to see that you're still that awesome person. I hope you're feeling better over that "oopsie" the other day, and learned from it. Same thing for the other person. That's the difference between experience and mistakes, a smart person doesn't repeat experiences, they learn from them. Or something deep like that. Anyways, the acrobatic yoga pictures boggle and do other things for me that are inappropriate to say in the blog, but in either case, I find the concept amazing. That takes balance, strength, and a lot of practice. I'm glad you're advancing in your yoga instructor skills. Did you ever finish that paper? Did you start writing it? Haha, I'm sure you did. I see that you're doing a photo shoot with the blue bonnet flowers. I'd expect the pictures to come out amazingly. I hear the weather has been a little wetter down there, so that's always good for the flowers. That picture of your little one in the flowers is always neat, and I hope you've been doing that every year, so you can see her grow, in the bluebonnets. I'm hoping you're spending good quality time with here over there, as she learns from mom, and gets more and more independent.
For some reason I was looking through my email, and I saw my old myspace link. I wrote a poem in it, surprisingly. It was actually pretty nice. I'm surprised I wrote that. I also wrote some pretty silly angry rant on it too. It's kinda funny to read both of them, and still know that I wrote both of them. I hope it's not a sign of being bipolar. They were 3 months apart. I'll post the poem next week I think. It should be a quiet weekend this week I think. I spent way too much money last weekend in Bahrain, all on fun things, but I can't be doing that every weekend. Just like you, I got my goals that I gotta keep on track for. None of them are very exciting, and I'll probably blow em on vacation, but for the time being, I'm saving up for something.
Well, take care, holler at me if you see me online, and I'll do the same. I think one time you said something like you tend to get worked up about things, I don't know why, but you have the exact opposite effect on me. Getting a chance to talk to you, or whatever erases any frustrations, or anxiety of the day. It's a great feeling, and although you may say you're not doing much, it's pretty cool. Thanks for that, and keep being that amazing person we all know you are!
-Huy
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