Week 19: Posting before Checkout

So, it would only make sense to blog something about what happened last time I went to the states, prior to leaving back on vacation again.  Otherwise, they all blur together, and it's all confusing.  Of course the same problems that plague those who are lazy about blogging will plague me, namely, forgetting what I did in the last 10 weeks.  I'll focus on the previous vacation first.   

Hitting the ground running:
So as usual, I do better/worse when I'm in a rush, the things I focus are get done well, the things I don't focus on, well, it's like the duct tape method.  My goal was to get out of work around noon or so, and to take a taxi over to Bahrain, as my flight was out of Bahrain.  I was going to meet a friend I had met the other day for lunch, and take a plane right out.  Once I was to land, I would then get home, shower, rent a car, and go on a blind date in Chinatown, and then after that, to the bars, to meet up with friends and remember what American brew tasted like.  A lot of crap to do.  So onward ho!

We have a weekly staff meeting that usually goes until about 11:30, this time no exception, possibly a little bit longer, but I had already had my transport ready to pick me up at 11:30.  So 1/2 hour late already, not the end of the world, my bags were packed already.  Just had to grab them.  I had spend the night before going around the city of Jubail buying random trinkets, and silly things that I thought were pretty cool.  They were all mostly made in China, but kinda looked like they were Saudi.  The cool things I thought were wooden egg, rugs, 2 hookahs, a lamp, candle holder, tea pot set, date bowl, a small rug looking thing, Hijab, and sand in a jar.  Of course, ultimately, it was all silly stuff no one needed, but I think everyone buys a bunch of crap the first time they come back, well just because.  You know better the second time.

So anyway, I had a bag full of crap, and 2 weeks worth of clothing.  I realize that unless you don't have access to a washing machine, there's no reason to bring that much clothing.  You'll never get to it.  Each bag weighed around 60 lbs each, still within weight limits, they were just a pain in the ass to carry around.  Anyways, we head out, my driver, Aktar, very cool guy, mellow, and very helpful.  He mentions this puzzle thing that he saw someone else had, that he wanted.  It was made from cardboard, and cut into a bunch of pieces, that made a picture.  10 minutes later, jig-saw puzzle crossed my mind, and I had another item on my list to purchase.  So the way it works with our company, is that there are designated days in which you go over to Bahrain, and if it isn't one of them, well then, you have them drop you off at the bridge, and you find your own way over.  Aktar was good enough to walk around with me until we found a driver.  He had never done this either, so he was able to see how the process worked as well.  Not a bad deal, it's a little expensive to cross over, about 200SAR, or 53 bucks per car.  If you have buddies that go with you, no big deal, if you go solo, it's a bit pricey.  I went solo.  The budget rent-a-car was the place that had the driver, and off we went.   The guy was very calm, and cool, spoke 3 or 4 languages fluently, and had been a driver both in Saudi and in Bahrain, for something like 10 years.  So he had seen some pretty interesting things.  He was cool enough to drop me off in Juffair, and pickup my friend G.

G is a sweet person, she works at a pizza place, I think I mentioned before, I got her a slice of cake on her birthday since she was working it.  Anyways, we had lunch, talked about life, our hopes, dreams, plans, all that good stuff.  We are completely opposites, but she's a cool person to talk to, and always helps us out when we get drunk, and feel like eating pizza, so it's a good thing.  We went to a great little coffee shop near the Gulf hotel, in the kind of European place to eat, Le Chocolate I believe, pricey, but delicious.  I had something with a bunch of caramel.  Couldn't beat it.  Good company too.  Maybe a bit too serious in looking for relationships though, no offense.  It was just lunch.  I wouldn't pop serious questions until at least maybe a month in at a minimum.  Oh well.  So back at the airport.  Nothing very eventful actually.  The only thing was the freaking super anal security.  I might have stumbled when they asked where I work, and from there, I was subject to every freaking possible check point.  I'm glad I got there with 3 hours ahead, as I needed a good 2 hours of it just for that.  First security is initial metal detector, lie detection, (which you should not stutter, or try to be cute at the security lady.  Apparently they're not allowed to have a sense of humor).  Second metal detector, explosive powder testing, and then checking of bag.  After that, they rinse and repeat with your carry own, including 2 tables of emptying the bag, and an addition explosive powder check.  I'm pretty sure it was just me, as people were buzzing by me, as I sat there trying to figure what the heck was going on.  Oh well, I didn't have anything I was worried about.  I did have all my stuff on locks, so I would have been pissed if they had cut out the lock.  I told them that, but apparently the language barrier didn't help the situation, and I just had to hope that they didn't cut locks.  And they didn't, so it was fine.  Flight was fine, there were a lot of military guys on the plane, as the US has a big naval base there.  Ha, I really didn't fear about there being any kind of terrorist situation, because there were a bunch of Jacked dudes, who really really wanted to get home, no matter what.  Haha.  Layover in Kuwait didn't have air conditioning, which kinda sucked, but it was only an hour.  Back on the plane with the rest of the navy dudes to DC.  Long flight, I slept most of the time, don't remember much.  Dinner was curry lamb.  Pretty tasty for economy.  DC I had a few hours layover, so I had enough time to eat, drink, walk around.   First thing?  Of course, a burger with bacon, and a beer.  It was 11:00, so it's ok.  Yeuling beer.  Very nice.  I also got a chance to see the discovery before it got placed in the museum.  It was sitting on a plane.  Nice.  Also bought Rosetta stone in Arabic.  Yup, need to open that.  Flight to Houston was on a tiny tiny plane, 2 seats one side, and 1 on the other.  No big deal for me, but more for the guy next to me.  I had been on a plane for 12 hours, without showering.  Sorry dude.

Houston - Houston's nice, I haven't been gone long enough for anything significant to happen really, so I wasn't really expecting to see major changes.  And they didn't really happen.  Blind date went OK, went to go get pho, which was tasty.  Just not much of a connection.  Eh, it happens.  It could have been worse, but could have been a little better.   Drinking's always drinking, cheaper for sure.  It's nice to drink Jack Daniels at a regular price.  Make mine a double.  Saw Jennifer's baby.  He's so fuzzy!   And slumpy.  Just kinda melts into whatever position you put him in.  Unless it's in the baby seat.  Then it's squirmy crying.  Mom and dad didn't look as haggard as I thought they would have.  After that, went to a wedding.  I got to be an usher, which is nice, rehearsal dinner was good, Mexican food at Cadillac Bar.  No one went out surprisingly, preparatory for the next night I suppose.  I think I went out that night, I can't remember, if I did, then  I had fun.  Danced a lot more than I normally do.  Sweated as much as I danced, so I broke even.  Wedding next night was quite nice, the preacher shortcutted the "you may now kiss the bride" which was weird.  He just kind of stopped.  And then they stared at each other before kissing.  Haha, it got the point across.  Reception was nice, lots of forced hilarity and awkwardness.  Open bar though, so no problem.  Tried to buy someone a drink, friend's wife got it instead.  She liked it at least, haha.  Pulled the awkward "be my friend dammit" thing on someone, didn't work too well.  Over all lots of ups and downs, but many more ups, good catching up with friends, and lots of drinking.  Can't really go wrong there.  We did go to brunch the next day again at Cadillac's.  Yummy, the bloody mary bar is nice.  And then it was time to go back home to Denver.

Denver - I miss Denver.  I miss mountains.  I miss being cold.  I freaked out on a friend that owed me money.    I think it was fair.  I won't go into details, but there was a good reason.  Although I'm still waiting for it... grrrr.  Hung out alot with that friend.  There's things I like about science, and there's things I don't.  Psychological drugs for one thing, I think are terrible.  Just because you can block some of the synapses and connections between certain parts of your brain, doesn't mean that it makes the person better.  For the most part, it numbs out the things that make the person unique, and it really sucks.  I hope I never have to been in that situation.  As long as it doesn't cause violence, or hurt/abuse another person, keep that stuff away.  It strips away who we are as a person, and puts in a zombie, which scares me honestly.  But, I got to hang out, and I was happy to spend time with a good friend.  I also got to eat noodles and company which is also nice.  Yum!  Mac and cheese, with a hint of truffle oil.  So rich and bad for you!  Yum!  It was nice to see mom and dad, making sure everything is working properly, tweaking this and that, reading, etc...  Very relaxing.  I also bought a nice shirt, saw a movie, bought some American stuff to buy for friends back in Bahrain, and Saudi.  Tight jeans too.  Boot cut, so it wasn't awful tight, just mildly.  I guess I looked good.  I didn't really feel like hitting on anyone, just hanging out, trying to see if I could cross my legs.  Haha.  Thanks to a couple of friends that gave me advice for buying clothing.  The soon to be mom was much more helpful.  Or at least more direct.  Yes, no, too tight, too loose, buy that one.  Saw hunger games.  AWESOME!  Can't wait for the next one.

Washington DC - What a city.  Very busy, everyone is intelligent, has a clearance, and they have great beer halls, and food.  I was lucky enough to have a friend that worked in DC.  I was able to chill and he was amicable enough to drive me around a couple of places, and to tell me where to go.  I didn't get to see everything I wanted, as you need to book ahead.  Especially tours such as the white house don't really allow for spontaneous trips.  Plus the area's freaking huge.  I was able to check out a good amount of sights.  All the pictures are on hudang6234.smugmug.  Saw the Udvar-Hazy Museum, which is where the discovery had just arrived, saw the washington monument, Vietnam War Memorial, the Holocaust Museum, Lincoln Memorial, a really fat squirrel, and the reflection pool, under construction.  Korean Memorial too.  Got to eat at a burger place that Obama ate at, Dogfish Head, and smoked alot of hookah.  Saw the Avengers!  Also, very nice.  Scarlett Johanson is a FOX!  The movie was also very well done.  Got to play with a dog, which was a very long time ago.  I miss Kiki, I hope she's gotten skinnier than me, haha.  Thanks a great deal to a good Fraternity Brother that was able to help me out with a ride, advice on where to go, and just being a bad ass and hospitable.  

The flight back was nice, business class actually.  Pricey, but man, the rest was so worth it.  I didn't have any jet lag, which was nice.  Had a day to recover, and went back into it for work.  

Well, what happened for the previous 10 weeks you ask?  I wish I could say a lot of things happened, and I'm sure if I thought about it very deeply, I could write a bunch of stuff that happened, but for the most part it was very much rinse and repeat.  We ended up going to Bahrain a great deal more, I had a more pg-13 reason of going, hanging out a lot with a friend; "P" I met online.  She's been really great to be around with, and it's been real great so far, so I hope it lasts.  Other than that, working drinking, working, and drinking.  We did go to a wedding the other day which was awesome.  

I wish I could give better details for the Saudi wedding, but it seemed pretty straight forward. All the guys on one side, all the women on the other.  You don't see the women of course.  From there, you proceed to drink tea, eat dates, socialize, sing outside if you choose, there are skin drums, that you heat up by the fire, so people dance with swords, lots of guys hold hands, more tea, eat Kapsa, sing some more, congratulate the Groom, and at some point he disappears in the night, and everyone goes home.  We got to wear thobes, which was definitely something that caused many guys to look at us Americans.  We wore it with pride, and in a way to show respect, rather than giggling about how different we look.  I liked it actually, very cool, even in the heat.  The second we bought them, and were trying them on, a bunch of Saudi guys asked to get our photo, so maybe we do stand out a bit.  

We went to Movenpik the other weekend, the best brunch on the Island of Bahrain, by far.  Unbelievable amounts of every type of food and drink you would want.  Booze out the wazoo, including the good stuff, Jameson, Cuban Rum, and Champagne.  Also, there was food.  I had lobster, steak, thai food, oysters, pork belly, sushi, and a bunch of other stuff.  The rest of the night got blurry, we had to sit 7 people in a car at some point, some people fell into a pool, and I had to take a $160 taxi back home.  It was a pretty crazy night, and I could have definitely done without it, but hey it was fun.

This last weekend, we stayed at a nice place, as P had the weekend off, and I wanted to celebrate appropriately.  The room included a separate lounge that had a food lounge with happy hour, and a very nice breakfast spread.  The pool was unbelievably nice, especially as hot as it was, the room was beautiful with a great view, and I couldn't have had a more relaxing/fun weekend.  Got my hair cut, had a snakebite drink (Guinness and cider)  I did lose my passport at the Chili's which made me crap my pants for about 1.5 hours, as I made our driver go all the way back from the causeway to the mall for me to cross my fingers that it was there.  Glad it was there.  Per my quote when I got back in the car, "Luckiest M-effer ever."

This will be the last weekend before my next trip.  Ticket's set up for Alaska, and I hope it'll be just as fun, my sister'll be there, as well as some other friends, from old, and recent, so I'm quite excited for it too.  And no mater what happens, mafi muskila.  No problem.  

Week 9 - Old School

I'm pretty excited.  I get to go back home next week.  I figured that I'll take a break from the blog, I'm sure I could talk about all the cool things I do in the US, and maybe I'll do a recap thing, but for the time being, I'll try to describe what I did this last weekend.  Well, I'm writing it early, but I'm pretty sure my Friday will be fairly boring, mostly cleaning and laundry.  But this weekend:

A quick trip to Bahrain.  (Again).  So yeah, I guess I like going to Bahrain, it's nice.  There's a sense of normalcy that you see when you go there.  People dress as they like, rather than what they're supposed to.  It mostly refers to women of course, and habayas.  Guys wear whatever.  I was told at some point that I was supposed to wear only long pants.  As I look around, everyone's wearing shorts.  Maybe it's a "if you're Saudi, then you can wear shorts"  I haven't looked as all the expats to see if they wear shorts.  I'll keep you updated.  The news made a big deal of what was supposed to happen in Bahrain, with the formula one races.  I was expecting to see a super crazy amount of traffic and people no matter where we went.  Lucky for me, I was wrong, and also, I came into Bahrain Wednesday night, not the Thursday.  Saudi takes off days on Thursday and Fridays.  Bahrain takes off Friday and saturday.  That means that if you go to the mall, it's all Saudi's wlaking around.  And of couse anyone who doesn't ahve work, or who are on vacation in Bahrain.  But I digress.  I met up with a friend for dinner.  Pretty cool person.  I'll have to be careful with what I write on the blog because she might be reading it, and'll get mad at me if I write anything bad.  So I'll focus on the meal.  I don't eat Filipino food often, so I asked her to show me a Filipino food place.  It's called Swan Lake.  Don't quite know why it's called that.  It's not named after the movie.  More of a tropical theme.  TV's everywhere with Filipino movies on.  Kind of distracting, well unless you don't know what they're saying on the TV.  Then you either zone it out, or ignore it, while watching how many other people are watching TV.  Looked like a soap opera of sorts.  Lots of slow zoom out shots, and people staring off into the distance thinking about something.  I wonder if they're thinking like their character on the show, or whether they're thinking about what they're about to do for the rest of the day.  But, once the TV went to commercial, I got both my friend's attention, and the staff.  Prior to this, I decided to make the great idea of asking her "What's the craziest dish on the menu?"  I was thinking like a sauce of sorts, not an entire entree.  Well, the entree is called Dinuguan.  And it has it's own entry in wikipedia.  Yum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinuguan

Well it tasted exactly like it described.  I've had blood before, sounds weird.  Don't judge.  So the flavor was not new.  The texture, was quite a bit different.  A bit runny, but it's a stew I suppose.  I kept on wondering what other parts were put into the stew, and wondered how well cleaned they were before they were put in.  I think there was liver or intestine in there.  And with intestine, man, you better clean it out well, or well, it taste like crap.  Yup, worst joke ever.

So I had some of that, it was ok, I had enough to make my friend laugh the entire time, everytime I ate some.  But of course, I had to man up, and say, ooh, yum, this is good, etc...  I was happy with just a taste, but I was directed to eat more.  More than 3 bites.  Uhg, and I didn't get dessert for being a good kid, and eating more than half of my meal.  At least I made someone laugh and smile, good enough for me.  The pork adobo was pretty good too.  I can make something very similar at home, but I don't use vinegar in it.  The tang is interesting for the food.  Well, i got what I asked for, a very interesting dish, that I may not want to eat in the future.  24 hours from eating the food, I spent most of the day using the bathroom.  There's too many entries about what I do in the bathroom, but I had to use both types of toilets, and one of them was in a car junkshop.  At least it had kleenex.  The mall did not.

So after dinner, we headed out to the bars, I guess there really isn't too much to do in the city late at night, but to go to a club or a bar, coffee too I suppose.  But we went to the bar, live band, good times, specifically one with Filipino singers.  I'm always amazed by how well they can sing.  I know for sure I can't sing that well. The coolest part to me is that when they sing, there is zero accent in the song, only when they talk, can you tell that there is an accent.  I suppose it's all about emulating the sound, and you don't have to have an accent when you're trying to repeat someone's tone.  Great covers of some songs, Bon Jovi transcends all cultures.  Good beer, I had never tried San Miguel beer before.  It's pretty nice, a bit sweeter than I thought it would be.  I had to do my best to keep up with my friend, she was going to drink me under the table.  I tried the best I could, but I can only do so well, my tolerance is only so good, since I can't drink very often, probably a good thing.  It was a good time for sure.  Well, until we had to find a way back home to drop her off.  I'm not very good at giving directions if I don't know where I'm going.  But apparently burgerland is famous enough that people know how to get there.  So after a couple of U turns, (on the clock of course) we were able to drop her off.  She's a trooper, she had to work 4 hours afterwards.  I would not have been able to wake up.  Well, my ride had crashed for the night, so I had to wait for him to pick me up, we agreed that I'd hang out in the Chili's parking lot near the mall until he could get there.  Surprisingly, I felt safer in the Chili's parking lot in Bahrain, more than in the US.  I guess it's the thought that you could mug me, but if you did, you'd get your hand cut off, or capital punishment'd, no question.  Plus, I think everyone assumed I worked at the Chili's, so I wouldn't have any money anyway.  So, we head back to the hotel, and it's a cheap one.  30 BD a night, a decent one is about twice the price, so I'm not expecting much.

It's a one bedroom, but the guy is nice enough to let me crash on the bed, and he on the couch. The room itself is big, which is becoming a normal thing over here.  Lots of space, but nothing works very well.  This time, it was the water system all together unfortunately.  Shower trickled for about 5 minutes and then stopped.  And the toilet didn't flush.  I was lucky regarding the timing, I was post soap and shampoo.  The toilet, well, I feel bad for the guy who has to clean the room.  The TV worked fine, and there was a speaker system in the room.  Weird.

So my ride was cool, and he showed me where he lived, and some of the cool places to go in his hood.  He's a pretty big car enthusiast, and you could tell that there were a lot of people that were also big into that.   The sound of loud mufflers were everywhere in the air.  He's got a 260z, with a giant turbo, and a few other modifications.  It's pretty mean.  He and his friends have a business where they retrofit cars and tune cars for others.  It's more built on power than looks, so there some respect there.

We finally made the trip back hope, well at least to Jubail, for me to find more touristy stuff.  Everyone assumed I was filipino, so hopefully that meant I got a better price for everything.  It didn't seem that way though, but with a friend we were able to negotiate down a few prices.  I was content with my purchases.  On the drive back, we were listening to my friend's mix cd's, and they are definitely old school.  Surprisingly, and I'm not quite sure why, but people listen to a great deal of pop and R&B here.  So, I'll put a date on myself, and don't blame me, I have a sister that made me sing along with it. The line up for singing included:

"My heart will go on - Celine Dion"
"Changes - Tupac"
"Quit Playing Games with my Heart - Backstreet Boys"
"Bailamos - Enrique Iglesias"
Some song by Mariah Carey, some Bone Thugs and Harmony, and even some Beatles song.

Very old school.  I found it odd that although the view on women over here is quite one-sided.  Unfortunately, that is very universal, all the native folks here believe that women have their place, kitchen, sex, and kids.  But then again, when you talk to them, it's all about finding true love, and connecting with someone on a personal level, and all that.  Quite a oxymoron in a lot of different ways.  Maybe it's the clash of old school culture versus new.  It's very interesting to see how a lot of these guys stand out versus your normal person.  No social qualms about talking to women, very straight forward and to the point, and this ignorance that would make me cringe, but maybe refreshing to others.  There's a large number of articles out there about how men in the US are getting soft, and too emotional, and all that.  Compared to the people I see over here, I can definitely say yes.  Not to say that you should be a jerk, or an ass to people, but stop worrying about what other people think about you.  Just be honest, and up front, and if people don't like that, then, well, their loss.  That's my new philosophy for the next couple months, I'll let you know how that goes.  Dress nice, be yourself, and don't be afraid of what other people think of you.  Alright, I go back this week to the US, so for all my friends that read this blog, I'm coming back, hope I get to see you all, and it'll be fun.

Week 7/8: Hi Hi, Hello Dubai!

Items of interest for the week:

http://hudang6234.smugmug.com/MiddleEast/Dubai-7-April-12-Public/22358051_JDQfDC#!i=1786642071&k=VR5JbMw

So, maybe it's a good thing that I'm writing about my Dubai trip a couple weeks after the fact.  It'll probably be less long winded and more to the point.  And besides, I think the entire point of this was to document what I did for the last few years overseas, since I have such an awful memory, and maybe I can get a few people to laugh too.  If not, then meh, I'll laugh to myself.  So here we go:

We kinda decided last minute to go to Dubai, which is usually very pricey.  In this case, it's kinda like driving from Houston to South Padre.  Maybe 6 hours of driving, or 1.5 hours flying.  I don't have a driver's liscense, so that answers that question.  Flights out of Saudi, Dammam, specifically were about 450 dollars (US) to fly out of, which would suck, so we elected to go out of Bahrain, which was much cheaper, 150 dollars.  The airline was "Fly Dubai" which is like the Southwest Airlines of the middle east.  Nothing fancy, but actually nicer than some of the US airlines I've been on, maybe I've been overseas too long, but all the airplane attendants are just nicer (and younger) than US domestic.  So, I get off of work early with the intent of getting to the airport early, our flight is 7:50 pm, and I have 8 hours, no problem right?  Just like everything else, things just don't quite work out smoothly.  The weight limit is 10 kg, so I have to check a bag, and my friend the divo (male diva) haha, I hope he doesn't read it.  Needs a checked bag as well.  So I go online to get the bags (I played travel agent for a couple other guys, since I was booking mine anyways).  The card gets declined once by my bank, since I booked two tickets so close to each other.  So I call my bank, and have them clear it.  But now my card's blocked from the Fly Dubai company.  The price for bags at the airport for non-pre bought checked in bags is something like 75 dollars, double the ticket price.  Screw that, I'll go to a travel agency.  So I call around, and apparently not everyone speaks English, man, this sucks.  They give me a phone number, which doesn't work, but I do kind of remember what the travel agency name is.  (Well not now, but I did at the time).  I've decided that we're stuck, and will have to pay 75 dollars, as Divo goes to get his hair done.  Or cut, I don't know, it took forever.  We drive by the travel agency on the way to the barber.  I tell the driver to stop, I'm going to try to pay for bags there, and off I go.  A little bit of a language barrier there.  I tell the guy what I'm trying to do, he gives me a befuddled look, and the lady next to me, who's trying to buy a ticket, just smiles, and tells me "good luck."  It worked out, and I paid 28 bucks each bag, which I think is still stupid, whatever.  So haircut gets done at 3:00, I'm getting a little antsy, since Divo still hasn't packed yet.  Man.  We head back, and we're ready to go at 3:45.  Still have time I think.  Our ride hasn't gotten out of work yet.  So he'll be here at 4:30.  Man.  We leave for Bahrain airport at 4:30.  It's about 1-1/2 hours to get there no traffic.  Doing the math in my mind, 6:00, no problem, if there's no traffic.  So of course, once I say that, there's traffic.  The ticket says we have to be checked in no later than 1 hour before flight.  Man, man, man.  Everyone in Saudi goes to Bahrain Wednesday night, either to go home, party, or fly out.  Like us.  We leave the gate at 6:20, and start driving to the airport.  Ok, we're good if there's not traffic here.  Road work ahead, one lane road.  ARGHHH! WHY!??  "Hey, drive like a Saudi, like you own the road, we don't have time to be nice"  OK, here we go, cutting off people left and right, honking, and pushing it.  We get to the check in counter at 6:52.  We're in the middle east, no one goes by this requirement that closely.  We get greeted, smile, breath a sigh of relief, and go to the gate.  No big deals going to the gate, we get there with 20 minutes till take off.  The plane's delayed, so we have an hour anyway.  ARGHHHH!  WHY!???.  Enough time to eat I suppose.  I have a yogurt that had been in my bag all day.  Eh, what's the worst that could happen?  It's all bacteria anyways.  And it was good.  No problem.  Stomach of steel.  One of the Saudi's, not anyone I know, is quite trashed, and doesn't speak any English, but he does like talking to people who look white.  He catches one of the white guys, and says something, does the awkward turtle symbol, does a swimming signal, and then laughs his ass off.  No idea what he said.  One of the guys translates.  "He said he cannot swim, and if the plane crashes, he's going to jump on top of you, and you will swim him to shore."  Haha, hah?  Alcohol's a hell of a drug.  We all secretly hope we don't have to sit next to him on the plane.

Flight's uneventful, I watched "The Sitter."  Hilarious toilet humor.  How do you get an 9 year old girl to say "I sharded" in a movie?  Awesome.  So was the vodka redbulls on the plane.  We're ready to party!

Let's go to the hotel.  Welcome to the "Taj,"  the only 5 star hotel in the slums of Dubai, known as "Old Dubai."  We have a 3 bedroom apartment, freaking huge room, and includes a servant's bedroom.  Full kitchen, and balcony.  It's very nice.  The TV said hello Mr. Dang on the screen.  I didn't get to take a picture of it, :-(.  We unpack, and decide to go out and party.  Clubs and bars, no matter where you go in the world, same stuff.  Loud music, expensive booze, and lots of smoke.  It was kinda fun.  We close out the bar, since we get there late, and get ready for tomorrow.  Two of the guys want to sleep in, and I want to go siteseeing.  Me and the poor guy who got the short end of the stick (in the servant's room) go check out downtown old dubai.  I took a bunch of the street pictures you may have seen.  For some reason, I like the ground looking up picture.

Downtown Dubai

Everything's closed in the morning, well until at least 10:00.  We walk around, car rentals are quite cheap for what they are.  300 bucks a day for a porche, no insurance, or anything needed.  Hmm, maybe next time.  We walk around, and move towards the subway.  The subway is pretty intuitive, and nice.  It cuts through the middle of the city, and connects one side of the city to the other.  Cheap too, a buck fifty to go from one side to the other.  We decide to go to the mall.  Mall, just like everywhere else, freaking huge.  Took forever to walk just from one side to the other, let alone check everything out.  We did see the infamous "Ski-Dubai" the only indoor ski place I can think of.  It's pricey.  Same price as a lift ticket, only there are 2 runs.  And they look short.  We don't have time to maximize the 180 dollars, so that'll be next time.  We get some McDonalds, and start heading back.  We have to go to see the Burj Khalifa in a couple hours.  And I need a suit to get in.  This is going to be expensive.  My friend who's been there, knows how to get a good suit for a good price.  We go to a suit place, and I see one I like.  How much?  5000 AED.   (Same as Saudi Money, divide by 3.75).  No freaking way.  Uh, do you have something, uh, more frugal?  Yes sir, come with me upstairs.  Alright, the stuffy room upstairs.  At least the price is better.  450 AED.  I can do this.  But of course, they do the ridiculous price versus normal.  I think they said it retailed for 4500 AED, now marked down to 450.  Riiight.  Special price just for me.  But it's suit, pants, shirt, tie, and they'll cut it to size the same day.  600 AED.  Done.   Slight pinstripes, and it's an Italian suit.  Can't be bad right? Well, I can't find it on the internet, so I'm assuming it's the Walmart of Italian suits, but hey, who needs to know that?  Just the people who read this blog.  Screw the rest.  I look good.  

So, every time I plan something, I really need to double check the times.  Twice.  And then get someone else to confirm.  I though the tickets were for 2:50.  Not 1:50.  We waddle back to the apartment at 1:00, joke around a little bit, and around 1:30 I look at the ticket.  CRAP.  NOT AGAIN!   ARGHH!!!! WHY?!!!  Tickets are non-refundable, and non-transferrable.  Go, go go!!  We all run out of the hotel, one of the guys just went to go take a nap.  He was rudely awakened.  We hop into a Taxi, and I tell the driver, 50 buck extra if you can get us there in 15 minutes.  He hauls ass, driving like a maniac, and we get there with 5 minutes left.  It's on the other side of the mall.  A very big mall.  The picture below is a picture of the mall.  We had to run from one side to the other.  And scale wise, you can tell we ran quite a ways.

Dubai Mall 

But once again, saved by the grace of ignorance, and the lack of strict deadlines, we were able to get in, 1/2 an hour late, with no problems.  And up we went.  Very reminiscent of the Empire State building.  Just freaking tall.  Tall to the point, where you lose perspective of how high up you really are.  Beautiful view, you can see the entire city, and it's interesting to note how things grow in sections.  Oh, if you wanted to stay in a hotel in the Burj, you're talking about 1000 a night.  Maybe next time, haha.  But the pictures describe themselves.  It's a cool feeling to say you've been at the top of the tallest building IN THE WORLD.  Awesome.  Glad I'm not afraid of heights.  Next door to the Burj, and the mall, is the indoor Souk, the flea market.  We walk around, it's quite over priced, I try to get a phone number from someone selling scented reverse osmosis shower something or other.  I look at it, hmm.  Looks more like a softener that smells like lime.  She was not impressed by my engineering marvel.  Rats, next time.  I buy more red bull.  I'm running on 4 hours of sleep. I'm exhausted, but I'm in Dubai, gotta keep on going.  Next on the itinerary is dinner at the "world's only 7 star hotel."  According to Wikipedia, it's really only a 5 star, but it's gonna be nice.  And expensive.

So, we plan ahead, I have someone check twice, my reservation, and we have plenty of time to get there. The taxi drops us off, and we are surrounded by luxury super cars, greeted with fleet of Rolls Royce's, and the most ridiculous lobby ever.  All the gold you see in the picture, is real.  No joke, gold foil, under an epoxy.  It is literally breathe taking.  You can tell why this place is $3000 a night.  I wouldn't pay it, but it's nice, very nice.  Unfortunately, one of us, decides to go for the cool hipster look, rather than the business casual, which is required to get in.  Apparently a backwards cap, hollister shirt, pre-torn jeans and headphones is not appropriate at a nice restaurant.  Who knew?  He didn't have any other clothes, so we were hoping his charm would get him in.  Nope.  We ask to see the manager, and ask if there's anything he can do for us.  He see's that the guy is from KSA, and mumbles something about being ignorant, and sees us Americans.  He's french, makes some cowboy joke, sees that we're cool, and offers us a private room instead of being out in public.  Hey, that's awesome.  We can't tell if Kobe Bryant is here, but at least we get to eat.  The ambiance is stupid nice as well.  We don't get to see the main aquarium, but we get our own section of aquarium. Also nice.  Regular fish though.  They aren't gold foiled.

Food:  It's nice.  Good, gourmet quality for sure.  I didn't take pictures of the menu, which sucks.  But the food pictures are quite nice.  Makes my mouth water for sure.  Here's my favorite:

Fresh Oyster, with Caviar, Parsley Foam, and sprinkles of Gold Foil

Salmon, oysters with a parsley foam and edible gold foil, (I couldn't find any.  My waiter kept on pointing but I didn't see it.  I think he's just saying it)  oyster soup, with egg white, Scallop with fried arugula, and truffle, with potato cake, and a Parmesan doily.  Pumpkin and fig soup.  Scallop in a rich broth, can't remember what.  Seafood medley (actually disappointing, kinda bland compared to everything else), mango puree in sponge cake, in a white chocolate shell, and some awesome chocolate thing.  I gave up chocolate for lent.  I got fruit.  ARGHH!!!! WHY?!!! Haha.  The drinks were nice, expensive.  You knew exactly the markup on it, so that was kinda sad, but complimented the meal nicely.  Total damage, 5500 AED.  Man, you gotta play hard sometimes.  I won't be doing it anytime soon, but, that was awesome.  We take some more pictures from the hotel, and head back.  We go to a Filipino bar, listen to some old school rock.  Man, they're good, no accent when singing, but very thick accent when they talk.  It's a nice way to end the night, very quiet.  I'm spent.  I hit the bed, don't even move until the morning.

Next day, I'm ready to party again, our flights late, and we have a day to conquer.  Someone at the beginning of the trip thought it'd be a good idea to buy alot of milk, vodka, and beer.  We have to check out in 3 hours.  Don't want to waste it.  We all give it the college try, while trying to find a nice brunch.  I'm feeling great now.  Maybe too great.  We decide to go to the Marriot, where they have a good assorted brunch.  One of the guys wants pizza.  For brunch?  Whatever.  We go there, there's a nice car outside, good sign.  I'm still feeling good, and the bar's open.  There's always time for a beer.  We get a beer, while waiting for brunch to be open.  It's noon, so it's legitimate.  No judging.  The bartender was nice enough to deal with two loud mouth Americans trying to spit game, so that's nice of her for sure.  We eat brunch, it's quite nice, and there's all you can mimosa.  Man, that's too much for me.  We eat, drink, and are quite merry.  I go to take a brief nap, I won't say where, but it's for an hour or so.  My friends finish their dessert round, and go find me, drag me out, and we head out.  We go to the other mall, the Mall of the Emirates, trying to find a store for a friend, we fail, it's at the other mall, give up, grab subway, and head towards the airport, on time.  The rest of the trip is actually quiet, nothing crazy on the way home, we're all tired, I'm hungover, and we all want to head home.  One of the guys gets stuck in the wrong line, and takes an hour to clear customs.  We got through in 20. He's super agitated, since the only reason the line was going slow was a apathetic customs agent.  He wasn't in a rush at all.  We head back, and I crash, ready to go to work the next day.  Whew, heck of a weekend.

The following weekend was pretty quiet, a repeat in Bahrain, and Kobar.  Ate some really good, cheap Indian food, paid for it later, the same way I always do with spicy food.  I bought gifts for family, and friends.  A nice watch too.  Bought someone a slice of cake for their birthday, since they had to work.  Sucks to work on your birthday.  I've done that a few times.  Hopefully it made her night.  We'll see what happens next week.  Might be quiet, but I know better than to say that now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Letter to *******,

So I don't know why, but I came across my "myspace" page from way back in the day.  Looking through, yeah it's old, no one uses it, but I did come across some interesting things I typed back in the day.  I think this one was 6 months from when I moved to Texas.  I remember it was actually quite lonely.  Trying to find a niche in a big city, in a small town was difficult.  It wasn't until I moved into the city, was I able to find my niche, and find out where to go, and who to hang out with.  It's a clear reflection of how I still think, mixed with a little bit of sadness.  I kinda wish I could tell myself 5 years ago (that's how old it is, wow!)  that it'll get better.  Definitely different, but in a good way.  I may not be married with kids, and all that, but I have more self confidence, have much better opportunities, and am in a spot to steer life how I want to, rather than to just float through life.  I've always been determined at work, but not as directed with life.  I can say that I'm in control of both, and know what I want.  It's nice.  Here's the excerpt. I still actually believe the universe theory mentioned below.

Its a funny thing these Sunday nights. I always seem to get insomnia on Sunday nights. Maybe its all the things I didn't get done during the weekend, or maybe the things I need to do this week. It always seems as though my mind is going a mile a minute, while the clock lethargically ticks away. Maybe that's why people get into diarys and such before they go to bed. I find myself to be a very organized person on paper, but not so much in real life. Maybe that's why I'm writing now.

Thoughts in my head at the moment:
1. The Kardashian family blows.
2. Why do people hermit themselves at times?
3. Playing sandlot style baseball is sweet.
4. Ankle bracing.
5. Training.
6. Old friends coming and going.
7. You.
It's funny that I still think about you sometimes. One day I will find words to express the complexity that I am still trying to unravel. Others say its so simple, but it isn't. It can't be. Can it? Is it? Is density and complexity the same thing? I don't know, but I know I spend these Sunday nights thinking about it.
I read somewhere online about infinite universe strings based off of decisions we make. It's a fun thought. Everyone has their own infinite number of universes everytime we choose to do something. Everytime we choose one or the other, the later universe plays itself out, but we in our frail human state just can't see it play out. Maybe that's what dreams are made of, our mind starting to pick apart these other universes. I do wonder what decision tree I had to follow to end up fighting Aliens at Walmart. Maybe it was just bad pizza. I'd like to think not. Somewhere I'm out there saving the world while keeping prices low. Hopefully not at the expense of human rights lol. Other nights though, you come up. Part of me wishes that these are universes that involve you and I in a different light. They can't be bad, we seem pretty content in these universes. On the other hand, (interjection, this is what we call optimistic realism, or maybe that idealistic cynicism, yeah put that in your pipe and smoke it) I think it has more to do with wishes and desires. Those occur in your dreams too. Logically this makes no sense at all. If it was that simple, then I shouldn't be dreaming this kind of stuff at all. I'd like to think it's subconscious, but sometimes its not. It's actually what keeps me up on Sunday nights. I think sometimes that there isn't a way to write how I feel on paper. I start writing hoping that the words will start flowing. They don't. It's probably more that I don't know how I feel. The internal struggle, the complexity of it all just boggles my mind. My personality revolves around logic, and things like this just don't make logical sense. That's why I struggle with it so badly. Maybe a poem that's really vague and full of imagery will encompass it all. Oh man, engineer + poetry = math equation? No, I don't think so.
So 5 years ago Huy, buck up, cheer up, don't eat so many of those Pot Pies, and know that Things Come together, even when they look like Things Fall Apart.  

1. The Kardishians are still shallow, and make millions based on drama.  Things like that don't change.  Well until people stop being dramatic and shallow.  Good luck with that.  

2. Because they're afraid of the unknown.  What's the worst that could happen?  People that are mean probably are worth your time, or they're having a bad day.  

3.  Yes, yes it is.  Great movie.  And I remember playing that game with 3 people.  Lots of running.  Baytown good times.  

4.  Sprains suck.  

5. Yup, I need to do that, I miss martial arts.  

6.  Yeah, but there's no reason why you can't instigate it.  If they don't answer, then well, that sucks.  Maybe they weren't as good of friends as you thought.  At least your tried.  

7.  Like someone said, don't shed a tear that it's gone, smile that it happened.  A better way of saying that better to have loved and lost than to have never have loved at all.  

And I still remember the Walmart Aliens dream quite vividly. I had to run to go get an axe, but I needed someone to lay cover fire while I did it. And then I woke up. Man, I could have Rambo'd the heck out of that dream. Stupid work. Haha. 9 days until I come home. Lookin forward to it for sure, for sure. Armageddonbaconboozingfrostedminywheatmexicanfoodwomenwithoutcovers!

-Huy

Week 5/6 - A haircut and the Tree of Life

Items of note for the week:

So i'll just start off with the really bad news.  My mustache was taken away in the night by some right wing conservative bureaucratic paper pushers.  My beard, stricken from grief, passed on,  the following day in the shower.  Maybe that's exaduration.  The long story is that you must adhere to the clean shaven policy unless you have religious beliefs that are against that.  I can't think of a verse in the bible that supports mustaches and beards.  Especially as bad as mine looked.  I did get my stache trimmed before it went away, at the barbers.  No sign on the door, you wouldn't be able to tell it was a barber unless you knew where Faiha Barber is.  I am constantly amazed by how bad-ass people can do things, and do them manually, rather than using electronics, or machinery.  Case in point, my hair cut.  The entire thing was done by scissors.  I think I got charged more because I asked him to trim the neck using the electric trimmer at the end, and trust me, he did not need a trimmer to get a clean edge, or a transition edge.  That I can understand too.  I should pay extra for the electricity, the maintenance, and any wearing edges on the razor.  I've been told that stylists will cut your hair with just scissors, but it'll cost more.  That's like asking an accountant to do your taxes, and he charges more to do it with an abacus.  I'm ok with him doing it with the slide ruler, but I'm not payin for it.  Anyways, the cut was nice, quick, and he rubbed my head with tissues, to get the hair out.  It really worked too!  Not a drop of hair anywhere on me for the rest of the day.  That was the first thing I noticed when I took a shower.  (Different place, not the hair cut place).  And then he asked do I want him to trim my mustache?  Hell yeah!  It looked less like a walrus in puberty and more like, well me with a stache.  Kinda cool, but generally kinda creepy, and filipino apparently.

The rest of last weekend was pretty quiet too, a friend made hamburgers and hot dogs, I brought over french fries, tossed in Tony Chacheres, some garlic powder and truffle oil.  Pretty good.  The hot dogs did not plump when I cooked em.  We drank a bunch of Budweiser.  The N/A stuff of course.  It's a very interesting tasting beer, I'll have to try a O'douls when I get back in the states.  But then I would hate myself if I did, so maybe not.  I found out vacuuming tile's kinda hard.  I left a tums in my pocket when doing laundry.  My clothes had a high pH, but was all very berry blend red.  Sorry, can't have exciting weekends every week.

Week 6:

Kinda a rinse and recycle weekend from the Bahrain trip the last week.  We did do some more site-seeing this time.  I didn't bring my camera of course.  Bleah.  We used our fancy company phones for this, so I'll upload them.  I talk about it a little bit below.  That night, quiet night, but we ate at a place called shrimpy's.  Fast food place, they shwarma everything.  Philly cheese steak shwarma, actually spelled awfully.  Something like fylli cheestik sanmich.  Once I figured it out, I ordered a regular chicken swarma.  Pretty tasty.  It's still cool how some of these places work.  There's a Walmart Greeter type guy at the door.  He shakes everyone's hand, with gloves on.  Then he goes picks up trash.  Who's the underpaid smart one here?  He's got gloves to pick up our crap, and then we shake his hand.  Glad I washed mine first.  Not everyone put those two together.  Haha.  We had some amazing thai food, it had a funny name.  Wang thai, or something like that.  *giggles*.  Should not have ordered the super spicy curry.  (See week 1 and the adventures of the squatter toilet).  I've adapted now to it though, just like a friend mentioned, you learn to stuff your "onesy,"  if you've work FRC, you know what I'm talking about.  I basically take the sleeves, stuff them in my pant legs, and roll it all up, or down, whatever your perspective is.  You have a flash-proof roll of clothing.  Still don't understand how to do this without holding onto the walls.  I swear, those guys must just get naked and go.  No more poopy stories.

This time, I spent a lot of times with some friends talking about careers and life, and how to best approach life.  Not sure I agree with all of what I heard.  But I can't say no to it, I haven't tried that yet.  And besides, the worst that could happen, well at least to me, is that I'll smell a little nicer, and have some nicer clothes.  Although if my jeans are too tight, I might only have girls for the rest of my life.  Haha.  Speaking of that, man, got swindled like suckers at the mall.  Perfume shop selling cologne.  Good smelling stuff.  started off about about 75% of retail price.  Ok, here we go with the haggling.  Let's see how far we can go.  Knocked down to 50%, still battling, alright let's try 25%.  They're balking, saying that's ridiculous.  That's all we're doing, final offer.  They take it.  We think we're making it off like bandits.  $25 dollars for good cologne, that  retails for 4 times the price?  Too good to believe.  Definitely so.  We did the first dummy thing, and didn't open the bottle right then and there.  We inspect the box, and bag.  They were most definitely legit.  The bottles, also legitimate.  The cap and more importantly the bottle seal, were fake.  I.e. refilled.  i.e. cheap ass cologne you buy by the gallon.  Same color though at least.  Needless to say, some people that I don't like too much, but am obligated to like are getting some good colored stuff.  And at least I learned the valuable less that every one learns, if it's too good to be real, it probably is.  The final clue should have been when the guy sold a buddy a fake rolex, that came in the real box.  Haha.  At least they didn't sell me a bridge.

Alright, tree of life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Life,_Bahrain

So we have some time to burn until dinner, and ask what's the best thing to do in the meantime?  We have beer in the car, and nothing to do.  Well, we can drive around and drink, or do something touristy.  Answer:  Both!  Let's go to the museum and visit the tree of life, and drink on the way there.  I'm glad our DD doesn't drink.  It makes us feel better about our safety.  The museum that we visited was right next to the tree of life, so we couldn't help but go.  It was a museum dedicated to the oil trade, and all the things that it spurred.  Now, Bahrain doesn't do much more exploration and drilling, but it still does a bit of refining.  So, in either case, it's still quite important.  We took some pictures in front of the original well that was drilled back in the 1900s.  Haha, looked like original equipment.   One of the guys that's a big wig now over here is in one of the pictures.  That's pretty crazy.

We then proceeded to try to get to the tree of life.  Now, what you'd usually see for a national monument is big signs, and big a nice paved road.  This is authentic old school stuff.  You have to definitely know where you're going in order to find the place.  The one thing that I still find great in the country is that (as long as you're a guy, sorry) everyone is quite friendly.  We were shamefully lost, and asked for directions.  They guy who didn't know us at all escorted us all the way to it.  No problem.  Mia mia.  (Saudi slang for good.  It means 100, 100 i guess it's like the percentage.  So so is then 50/50.  I think its noose noose, or something like that)  The tree is big.  And it's in the middle of nowhere.  And that's about it.  There's a fence around it that's new.  The tree was quite wet.  In the desert.  I'm assuming someone felt as though they needed to water the tree of life.  (with pee)  My favorite part of this entire trip is the two polar reactions that occur when we pull up to the tree of life.

1.  Pure amazement, seeing this large tree, in the middle of nowhere.  There is no water source, or anything near by.  Only a ice cream truck, of all things.  I don't think the ice cream truck has been there since the tree.  You start wondering how the tree got there in the first place, where the seed came from, and maybe, just maybe, if a tree can make it out here, then we can survive anywhere in the world in any condition.

2.  (From our Saudi friend who had been driving).  What the hell is this?  We drove for 45 minutes getting lost to look at a tree?  We have bigger trees than this in Saudi, what's the big deal?  You American guys are weird.  I'll go take you to a big tree that people pee on in Jubail, Saudi if you really want to.  Let's go already.  Ooh, ice cream.  Maybe it was worth the wait.

The rest of the car ride was both sides trying to convince the other who was right, no one won.  Alright,  now what?  We call the restaurant, and the earliest they can get us in, is  9:30 pm.  It's 6:00.  Hmm, what can we do?  Our driver friend recommends we go to a Saudi club... Hmm what kind of club?  Club with women.  Club with what kind of women?  Oh, you'll see.  Uh oh.  I think we all know what kind of club this is in the states.  Eh, let's give it a try, we all thought that this kind of stuff is prohibited over here.  So we go to the club, and it's pretty normal, no cover, which is expected, it's only 6:00.  We go in, there's a few women singing on stage, very traditional music.  Or maybe not, it didn't sound poppy to me.  There's a gaggle of girls in the back, all looking bored and hanging out.  Everyone is elegantly dressed, something like evening wear I suppose, long dress.  First thing I notice (sorry, i'm shallow) is that they all have big personalities.  Not fat, just very curvy.  Very curvy.  Kinda fat I guess.  Anyways, I digress.  It's dark like you'd expect, and we sit down, the waitress takes our order, and we all get a beer, i get a Walker Red and coke, and a few of us get some sheesha.  The water cooled tobacco stuff.  There's not much to it, you're smoking cooled smoke, not as filtered, some people claim the water filters some, which is probably true.  If you smoke a lot of the stuff, it could be worse than cigarrettes.  Depends on how often you smoke it.  It's flavored double apple, and it's pretty tasty.  Still bad for you, tsk tisk.  I digress again.  We all are just watching, seeing what's going on.  There are Filipino waitresses handing out flower necklaces to people.  We ask, hey what is that for.  "It's a tip for the pretty ladies."  Ok... So what she do for the tips?  Do?  She's doing it right now.  Standing there?  Yup.  She'll look your direction.  Ok... Hmm, what else?  Well they'll dance with you too.  Oh, ok maybe that's what they're talking about, a "dance."  So we watch for a while, they actually meant dance dance.  (Revolution, hahahahaha, aw, not funny).  So its in bad form to give a singer/dancer money directly, instead you give the Filipino waitress, in this case 3 bd (8 bucks) the money, and then she goes to the dancer, gives here the flowers, and tells her who gave her the flowers.  Ok, if you give her enough flowers, she looks at you more intensely?  And then eventually she'll go to you, and you do some awkward hand holding dance.  Still 6th grade style with 18" between yourselves.  Eh, it's a living I guess.  So the women singers get replaced by a guy, and he gets a bunch of flower necklaces.  Enough that you can't see him anymore, he's head to toe in bright red flower necklaces.  He's by far the most leyed person of the night.  (haha)  People continue to come in, and the club's getting busy.  There's a group of guys, and you can tell they're ready to party.  They all stand up in unison, and start dancing with each other.   Hmm, ok.  The girls just stand across from them as they dance.  Hmm.  This is a pg-13 strip club.  Maybe even PG.  By this point, my head's spinning due to all the tobacco in my head.  One of the other guys says screw it, and buys a girl a flower necklace.  They do an awkwad dance, neither of them really speak or understand what they're saying, but good for you, way to try something new.  Communication is 90% body language anyways right?  It's now 9, and we're ready for dinner.

Dinner time. We start making the drive back, towards the city, now that we're all treed out.  Dinner is at a nice Asian restaurant, asian fusion style food called Monsoon.  It was nice, and we were classy.  Until someone fell in the fountain.  In his defense, this was a fountain that was not curbed, and it was below us.  One of our friends who will remain nameless just took a step backwards, and, well caught himself, so all he did was go thigh deep (one leg) into the fountain.  Apparently this wasn't the first time, since the hostess, who was very nice about it brought towels, I mean bathing towels out immediately for him to dry off.  No one really laughed, everyone noticed, but we were the ones laughing the most.  Anyways, it was time for us to be shooshed away to somewhere, where we couldn't embarrass ourselves.  We had 5 people, and ate at one of those sit down booths, where you sit on the floor, but there's a sub-floor that you put your legs and feet in.  It gives an illusion of being close to the ground.  One of the guys will always order egg rolls and fried rice no matter where we go, regardless of the country of origin, if it's Asian.  So we order egg rolls for an appetizer, they have some Viet food which I jump on.  They have spring rolls with lemongrass beef, and one lemon grass chicken.  We definitely have to order that.  Main entrees were also quite tasty, some Thai curry, pad thai, Humour fish cooked in a nice broth, and some beef stuff I can't remember.

Our driver has some international lebanese music on that's quite catchy.  Poppy really.  I liked it, and proceeded to borrow the CD.  If you're interested, or want to help translate, it's:  Nancy Ajram.  Very mellow, and pretty.  She's quite a looker too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Ajram

And that was all we really had time for, we had work the next day, and it was time to go home.  So we did, and continued trying to solve the world's problems one beer at the time till we got to the border, and had a nice long nap on the way back home.

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Week 5 - Make it (Bah)rain

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 

Week 4 - Tossing Fruit in a Sandstorm

Items of note for the week:

Week started off pretty quiet as usual, went to a nice steakhouse for dinner on Saturday.  The salad reminded me of the salads available at Souper Salad.  Steak was placed on a hot rock, and slowly sizzled as I ate it.  Pretty tasty, and with good company.  Got to talk to the parents and sister via Skype on Saturday.  That made the night for sure.  My new stache/beard thing that I got going on kinda confused mom and dad.  They think it's so that I'll fit in better.  I just think it's cool.  Maybe not.  I'm still keeping it.  The weather has been pleasant, almost warm some days, but not enough to complain about.  It has been super windy.  With wind in the desert, you get sand storms.  It's gloomy outside, kinda brown.  The big difference, is that there is tiny sand blowing all over the place.  Not enough to sting your face, but enough to get in all your nooks and crannies.  I really have to wash behind my ears now, and blow my nose more often.  Might have to let my nose hairs grow longer to filter all that extra sand, haha.
http://astorblack.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/mi4sandstorm.jpg?w=540


Played some cards sometime mid week, it was nice.  Incredibly delicious spicy sausage.  Crazy game.  I've never seen so many 4 of a kinds, straights, or full houses.  None of them were mine, but I was lucky enough to get second place.  Made my night.  Well the sausages reminded me of what happens to spicy found in my gut as I was going to work.  I was 1/2 an hour late to work because of that.  Which isn't that big of a deal compared to what I had to deal with in a couple of days.

One of the guys that I worked with previously, and who traveled over here short time, left this last Wednesday, which was kinda sad.  Good guy though.  Anyways, we took him out to dinner at a fancy Chinese food place.  Well, it's one of the very few Chinese food places here.  Good amount of food between 5-6 people.  Nothing crazy, egg rolls, garlic fried rice, tempura shrimp, shredded garlic beef, sweet and sour chicken, dry hot pepper chicken, and some other shrimp stuff.  Hot and sour soup was pretty tasty too.  100 riyal a person, which is pretty pricey for Chinese food, but it's so foreign here in KSA, that people pay more for it.  It's like how we pay quite a bit more for food at Nikko's Nikko's.  It's a lot of food, but it's still expensive.  But that's not the point.  The dry hot peppers, if you haven't had one are literally that, dried, and HOT.  Well, some of them are.  The ones I had definitely were.
http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00PMOtzjHfakgD/New-Crop-American-Red-Chili.jpg
No big deal at the time, there was plenty of actual iced tea to wash it down.  The next day though.... So right before a stifling 3 hour staff meeting, my stomach starts rumbling, and I need to use the bathroom.  If you know me at all, then you know that I wait until the very very last minute before taking a poo.  I'd rather run and try to make a photo finish than sit on the pot and get a misfire.  I think it's a total waste of time if I have to go to the bathroom and don't relieve myself.  TMI.  Alright, to the point.  If you read my first blog, you'll know that they have squatter toilets, and regular toilets.  I wear mechanic's coveralls.
http://i21.geccdn.net/site/images/n-picgroup/91380.jpg
If you notice, it's basically a onesy.  So if you have to use the toilet, you completely drop the top of your shirt down to the ground.  No big deal normally.  However, a couple things about people who are used to using squatter toilets, and who clean themselves before prayer time.   So there's a drain next to the toilet, and a hose in the stall.  You wash yourself down in the bathroom.  So the floors are obviously wet.  Secondly, if you've never had to touch a toilet seat, the concept is pretty gross.  You wouldn't touch it, and if you had to pee, well, you know how women complain sometimes about leaving the toilet seat up?  (Because it's so hard to look at where you're about to sit?)  It's worse if they just pee on the seat.  Alright, combine the three scenarios.
1.  I have to poop fire.
2.  The floor is wet.
3.  There is pee all over the seat.

I'm in a hurry.  I grab toilet paper, and try to dry off as much pee as I can, and drop the bomb.  I sit down and realize two things.  Firstly, I missed wiping the inside lip of the toilet seat.  Gross.  2.  The arms of my nomex onesy is sitting in water.  Double gross.  I wipe over and over, hoping that somehow this cleans the horror of sitting in pee.  And I just pooped fire.  So it's not the best thing in the world.  Oh, and it's not super soft, cottonelle either.  It's generic Costco brand tree bark.  Well, at least the pee's sterile.  I go to wash my hands, try to dry off arms, and go to meeting.

During meeting, I smell this weird smell of cigarettes and pee.  I look around, thinking it's someone else, but eventually find the smell emanating from my sleeves.  And then the light bulb hits.  If I was peeing all over the seat, why wouldn't it splash on the floor?  My arms are covered in pee, and I cannot leave this staff meeting, since I'm already late.  Normally the staff meetings are 1 hour.  This one is 3.  By the time the meeting is over, the pee has dried up.  I haven't payed attention to anything in the meeting, because my arms are now covered in dry pee, and cigarettes.  The slight ammonia smell wouldn't have had been so bad, had it not been the slight finish of cheap cigarettes at the end.  Needless to say, I was pretty much mortified, and there was a lot of washy washy, gagging, gagging, sobby, sobby at the end of the meeting.

So one of the other guys that I knew before coming over here, is leaving next week, and some of the guys wanted to throw him a party as well.  This is done at a place called "Beach Camp A."  It's owned by the company, and it's pretty nice.  Place to fish, big area to hang out, basketball court, and a volley ball court.  One of the nationals offered to buy all the food.  There are 2 shifts that hang out.  The majority of our workforce are Filipino contract workers.  They get paid very very little for how much they work.  I won't go into the details, as it's not published.  But trust me, it's jack squat compared to what we get paid, but then again, it's a lot compared to what they could get at home.  It's all about perspective.  Anyways, the guys do get home, and food, but it's a small dorm style apartment, with multiple roommates, and bland crappy food.  So, they all showed up for this party, maybe 50-75 people total at the camp.  It's pretty quiet, people are hanging in their clicks, kind of waiting to see what's next.  You don't have the option where there's beer and alcohol to help stimulate discussion.  So, the fruit arrives, as an appetizer.  A box of bananas, box of granny smith apples, box of red delicious apples, and a box of oranges.  We're all kinda staring at it, not knowing the best way to distribute.  One of the contract guys says, "Hey, throw an orange over here."  And it begins. He gets an orange thrown at him, and he drops it.  Everyone laughs, and another one is thrown at him, he drops it again.  Some of the other guys are yelling, "Hey, throw it at me, I'll catch mine."  OK, you asked for it.  It's food fight time!  Only we have all the ammo on our side of the table.  All the contract guys aren't going to throw it back, they'd rather eat it.  So we start throwing fruit all over the room.  The room itself is probably about 100' x 200' long.  We're lobbing fruit, and zipping it along.  Tossing most of the fruit, but there are some cocky guys, who you just gotta zing an apple at em.  4 boxes of fruit, 50-75 hungry Filipinos = awesome.  The bananas didn't throw too well.  The oranges actually split pretty well when they hit the wall.  All the fruit is consumed.  We then proceed to play some 5 on 5 basketball, I'm awful at basketball, plus I'm out of shape.  The contract guys kick ass, and don't even break a sweat.  I'm soaked from the game.  But it's time to eat now!  What a spread.  Mixed grill, pizza, and KFC.  Can't beat that.  All the food is eaten, we take pictures.  Everyone loves to be in pictures, and it's 45 minutes of just taking pictures with the Americans.  I look Filipino, so no one really wants pictures with me.  They wouldn't know the difference, except that I don't look hungry, aka FAT.  It was a really fun night.

One of the other guys from work has a tent out in the desert, and with the guy I mentioned above leaving, they wanted to throw him a different party.  So this is literally a place out in the desert, probably about 45 minutes south of where we live, about a kilometer off the highway.  We first stop off at the Harley Davidson shop, pick up some souvenirs, I take some pictures, and we start heading to the camp.  We cross city boundaries, and take off onto a dirt road to the camp.

It's kinda a dirt road, but not really.  More of a sandy, I hope you have four wheel drive kind of a road.  The building itself is very nice, and he's an incredibly gracious host.  He tells us that it's customary for the host to literally host everything, including pouring drinks for everyone, bringing out the food, and to not relax honestly.  He provides both tea, and arabic coffee.  Very different from the traditional type of coffee.  It's freaking delicious.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_coffee
There's dates, caramels, and assorted nuts.  The nuts are coated in lime salt, and I couldn't stop eating them. We come into the same situation as last night, where you chit chat and BS for a while, and then it gets quiet. We go outside to explore.  Now the other ex-pats have been making the "Hey, if you hear a camel grunt, you have to cup his balls to make him stop, haha."joke all day.  Yeah, all day.  Ha ha.  The guys show us how they get water, apparently, there's a buried freshwater pipe, not pressurized, so you have to pump it up to the surface.  We watch as he primes the pump, and there's water.  Pretty neat operation actually.

 I see camels way in the background.  I grab my camera, and start taking pictures.  Same joke as above.  Yeah, yeah, I can't hear the grunts, so it doesn't count.  We notice that there's an actual herd hanging out pretty close to where we were.  We start heading that way, hoping to get up close and personal.  I ask if they're wild, but our host tells us that they're owned by someone, and they're just grazing.  Just like cows.  They're domesticated, and don't really mind us.  So we pet, and take pictures, and make camel toe jokes.  They are big animals.  Very lean too.  It explains why the camel I ate the other week was so dry.  No fat on them at all.  Interesting thing about them.  No flies anywhere near them.  When I think of cows, I think of flies, and genuinely smelly animals.  These animals are pretty clean, don't smell, and we don't see flies.  There are flies, we saw that around the food back at the camp.  Clean animals.  Good.  We start walking back to the camp.  I find a hole in the ground, and start trying to take pictures, and am out of sight.  The camel starts grunting, and I hear a laugh, and a "Huy, where you at?  He's lonely."  I stay on the ground and wait out until the punchline is over.

We go back, and hang out for a while, dinner's in a few hours, and the time just passes by as we hang out, small talk, and watch the sand continually pass us by.  More and more people show up, one brings a remote control helicopter which gets picked up by the strong winds, taken out of range, and crashes.  It gets dark, a little chilly almost, and after a while, dinner arrives, and it's a great amount of food as always.  Fresh hummus, tabbouleh, grape leaves stuffed with rice, cream of chicken soup, braised goat and rice, mixed grill of chicken and beef, some salads, and lasagna.  Weird.  But all very delicious.  We all were hungry, and eat too much, watch the truck driver who brought the catering food and tables almost get stuck in the sand, and then almost take out the water tanks.  We laugh, and make the long drive home.  We're all pretty exhausted, stuffed, and pretty content for a relaxing quiet day at the beach.  Well it's like a beach minus the ocean.  

To see the photos,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75661280@N07/

Let me know ahead of time, so that I can put you on the friends list to access the photos.
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Letter to:  ******

Sup dude.  Hope everything is going well back in H-town.  I saw that you all did the 10k, I'm jealous.  I don't have too much motivation to run, but I still try to run at least the 5k.  I can't think of too much to say right now, but that I'm doing ok over here.  Getting adjusted pretty well, things are still kinda sur-real mostly, and I'm enjoying the fact that everything here is different and new, even if it's boring things that other people do every day.  One more month, and I'll either be doing start-up work, or on vacation for travel, so it'll be cool either way.  I definitely miss family dinner, the fact that Saturdays are my Mondays, and my Mondays are Wednesdays still confuses the heck out of me, but it's cool anyways. That's all I can think about right now, keep cool, keep losin weight, keep kicking ass, and I'll see you in 1-3 months, haha.  Send my best to the fam, and talk to you later.

-Huy