Even though i don't consider myself a 'cat person', i just had to get a picture with the sack o' potatoes that is Saigon. She is so fat compared to Sushi. you can really tell that she loved getting her picture taken with me. Another stop i wanted to make was a visit to the Jr. High School i went to when i lived in Saudi. It looked pretty different. There is a wall around the whole thing with a security box, new paint on the buildings, concrete torn up with grass and brick put down, and a bunch of shade things. i also wanted to see the pond i built for my eagle project. It looked like crap, if i ever go back i'm going to rev that thing back...clean up that water and get a new pump and filter.
Below is the school rock. i'm sure there is some history about it but i can't remember it right now.
The sign here was another eagle scout project, sure it looks better than my pond now...but my pond in its prime would rock this sign like nobody's business.
On my last day in Saudi, my dad and the family were invited to a some Training thing. i was hung over and sleep deprived and i had to show up to this thing at 8:30am. Speaker after speaker kept talking, and then there was an awards ceremony...i felt like i was at a North Penn Graduation, i thought it was never ending.
Luckily whoever organized this thing took in account that people would get very bored, so they had one speaker that does toast master contests. He wasn't ridiculously funny but it was nice to have something that i could stay away too. There were also two breaks that lasted about 10-20 minutes. Gave me sometime in the 90 degree sun to get my body temperature up because i was freezing in the room. i also got to sit in some fancy seats, i felt like royalty. Lunch finally went down at about noon. i was excited for some old school arabic dishes. Boy was i in for a treat. The main dish was lamb kabsa which was pretty good. My mom makes it better but i was satisfied with this particular dish. The other kabsa dish was fish, that was really good. There were also a bunch of kebabs and deserts that i haven't seen for years. The morning was pretty painful, but was made up for with the delicous lunch. My dad and i even got to enter the room before everyone else and sit at the VIP table with all the general managers. Pretty bad ass i know.
i was woken up to the site of Saigon and Sushi chillin by the window. If this doesn't remind of that scene from Lady and the Tramp then i don't know what will. These cats are so ridiculous. Sushi again plotting his next escape to the outside just to go around the house into the backyard and beg for someone to let him back into the house. Okay, i gave in...
Mom wanted to do some more shopping, big surprise. Below is a picture of the old Shula (sp?) Mall. It was pretty ghetto looking but you could get a lot of shopping done in this place before it burned down. It always smelled like incense and dirty water, oh how i miss the smell. All that remains of this glorious mall now is some broken cement pillars with rebar. On the shopping list was a new hookah for lazy son. The only problem was that my mom had forgotten where the store was. We walked in circles for a bit before finding a little store that had what my mom was looking for. Some fancy hubbly bubbly from Romania. For dinner, Cheri recommended the fancy Blue Strawberry. Where the prices are high and the servings are small. One of the great things about this place is the food plating. Some fancy food plating goes down in this place. Below is a picture of some prawns, massive shrimp...Cheri's favorite. i actually didn't care for them. Maybe if they were a little warmer i would have been better. Since i was told that the servings were small, i got two appetizers for myself. The second one was ceasar salad with teriyaki kebabs.For the main course i had the tenderloin. i can't believe they cut the meat for me...just ruins it. But it was still good, could have been better if they didn't slice it up already letting all the juices out. For dessert i had the lime cheese cake. The plating on this took the cake (pun not intended, okay...maybe it was). It looked like all i was missing on this dish was a sheet for a sail. The whole thing looked like a mast on a ship. It was pretty good, just wish the slice of cheese cake was bigger.Matt was along for my Blue Strawberry experience, and after we were all done eating we headed back to Cheri's in DH and thought we'd break out the new hookah. For the flavor of tobacco, i tried a new one. Not single, not double....but triple apple! Flavored with red, green, and yellow apples! Had my name all over it. We even broke out some natural coals because they're 'better' for you. The downside is that they take 20 minutes to lite on an electric stove. Overall though its a good hubbly bubbly.
Today was another super long day. Aramco was having some crazy Training Exhibition thing and cheri hooked us up with passes to go.While leaving the house, i saw the neighbor cat digging through the trash bag...this is one evil looking cat. It was so dirty too. It looks like its plotting some master mind scheme to turn everyone into cats with some cat ray and take over the world...
We got there a little late, but we were there in time to catch the big guys speech.
For lunch dad and i met mom at the tandori house. This is another of our favorite places to eat, but when we lived here...we had to go to khobar to hit up this delicious food. But since we've left, they opened up shop in the compound. Just how i like it, the food coming closer to me. The food here is mostly curry and junx, but its really good. Make sure you grab some of their flat bread when you go. After lunch, my dad and i drove over to another office building to say hello to more of his ex coworkers and see some general managers about who i have to see in getting a job and what hoops were needed to be jumped through.
Not sure why i took this picture. i guess i just thought it was funny it said "western toilet".
For dinner we went back to RT for some of my mom's Bun Cha Gio. A bowl of rice noodles, egg rolls, some veggies, and a sprinkle of nuoc nam.
i know sarah enjoyed it.i soon got bored after dinner, but didn't take me long to find a random toy to entertain me for a few minutes. i always wanted a claw thingie...all my friends had one, even brent! Ugh, i had such a deprived childhood...Anna sure loves her tv, and what's better than watching tv? Watching tv while sitting on grandma. i know my mom loved it.
Sunday was a lot of walking. My dad wanted to visit the old work place and say hello to the millions of people that he knows here. We spent our first 20 minutes looking for Bill's office...if only we could have google mapped it. My dad kept asking people around if they knew where a tall, skinny, bald guy worked...and they would give us the office number and point in the general direction. But the office number was hidden in another room that was locked so we just kept going in circles until my dad finally gave up and jacked a phone in one of the many conference rooms to have bill tell us where exactly he was.
Later we met up with Neil and he gave us some advice on who to see to get me a job over here since i'm too big of a failure to acquire a job in the states.Here we're walking towards the mail center and commissary...
The mail center, probably should have been more careful snapping pictures as that doesn't fly too well with the security guys...
Here is the mosque, i've always wanted to go inside...i'll just have to break in next time i'm in town.
Later i had matt and jon come over. We really didn't do anything, just watched lame tv and talked about the good ole days.This is Saudi, she is the devil...
For lunch i went to the dining hall with the parents. The food isn't that great most of the time but for some reason we keep going there. Probably because everyone goes there...i had some crazy curry and rice. For drinks, i had to have my favorites...Shani and Lipton Peach Ice Tea. i would prefer vimto over shani, but i never see vimto being sold anywhere so i'm stuck with second best shani. After lunch it was time to catch the bus to RT for our big movie shoot. Okay it wasn't that big...and its not even a movie, more like a documentary. Channel 2 wanted to make a video interviewing Americans that live in Saudi Arabia. They wanted to the ex pats to share how great their experience was and get more people aware that Saudis aren't crazy and want to blow up Americans. Of course this whole ordeal took forever, we had trouble getting the camera crew into the compound, mostly because one of the guys didn't bring any identification...bastard.
They arrived around 4pm and were suppose to be there at 2:30. It seemed like they were never going to leave and they wanted to interview each one of us separately...it got really late and i did not end up getting interviewed...bummer. So i wasted one of my few days in Saudi just sitting around watching camera men and sound guys do their thing.
The Jebels, one of the cool places the returning students would always hang out in Saudi. Jon called me up later and told me we were going to hit them up again. He failed to mention that it was going to be a bunch of teachers and adults in the jebels at the fire pit. Nothing wrong with that, just a little weird. My old gym teacher was there. Of course he didn't remember my name, bastard. He remembered it back in the day...kind of hurt me inside. i could of sworn he would have remembered me, i wonder who else has forgotten my greatness.
Of course there were drinks there, enough to feel good but not enough to party like a rock star. One of the people oh there busted out a hot air balloon that they got from Thailand...or was it China...some asian country. It was pretty cool, i wish i had one. It didn't take long for it to take off and it was pretty bright. It just kept going and going. It didn't burn out until 10 minutes later, who knows what it fell on...
Here is jon trying to be tough...i believe the other person is ben, the other Vietnamese.i met a lot of people that night, forgot most of their names and what they do...but for some reason Lisa stuck out in my mind. Probably because she decided to share her boy problems. She's like over 30, i thought chicks grew out of boy problems by then...and if they hadn't, they knew better than to share them with someone they just met. But not Lisa...Wasn't long until someone busted out the guitar, i tired playing it...failed miserably. Lisa then came over and decided to strum the guitar while i played chords. It was probably the worst sounding thing ever...but she kept strumming.
The party soon ended and jon gave me a ride back to Cheri's. i was welcomed by a broken sprinkler spraying over a house's rooftop.
Cheri has three cats. One regular black and white house cat that's probably the most anti-social cat you'll ever meet. Her name is Saudi. She has a black spot on her nose that kind resembles the shape of Saudi Arabia...kine of funny she ended up in the country she was named for. Saudi is like 17 years old and Cheri is just waiting for her to die.
The other two cats are Siamese. Sushi and Saigon. Sushi is nuts, he's always up in your business and he's always trying to get outside when someone opens the door. If you want him to come to you, you have to ignore him. Bastard. Saigon is the Siamese version of Garfield. All she does is lie around and if you're watching TV she'll slowly walk up to you like a three toed sloth and sleep in your lap. The two Siamese cats love each other. Saigon is pretty lazy but she'll burn a few calories for Sushi if he gives her attention. i was just waiting for them to break out in song...
i found the English version but couldn't embed it, so all i had to work with was the German version...which is awesome. It was that or the Hillary Duff one...and there is no way i'm putting Hillary Duff on my blog.
After waiting for several weeks my parents and i had finally gotten our visas to go to Saudi. Originally just my parents wanted to go by themselves and about a month before they were scheduled to leave my mom was like,"hey, why doesn't lazy son come with us?".
It was such a mess getting our visas. My dad couldn't schedule a flight for me to leave on the same day as them, so he got the next flight available which was the day after. Since he wanted us to all fly together he went ahead and moved his and my mom's scheduled flgihts to that day as well, which costed like a million bones. The next dilemma that occured was that our visas did not get processed in time so we had to move the flights back another week costing another million bones. Lemon.
As i have said before my mom is nortorious for packing unbelievable amounts of food when she travels. British Airways weight quota for suitcases is still 70 lbs/32 kg. Since my dad and i travel pretty light we let my mom use one of each of our two suitcases to pack stuff. She had four suitcases, a total of 280 lbs of storage...and she still asked me if could pack a few things in my own suitcase because she didn't have any room...ridiculous. The items in her bags ranged from surgary cereal and rice noodles to 20lb pieces of frozen prime rib. What a nut.
After doing all the fun checking in and stuff, i finally felt like i could relax when i found my seat at the the bulk head next to the exit...until i realized not even four feet from, there was a couple with what looked like a 2 yr old and another baby that looked just a few months old. Of course if one of them was quiet the other was freaking out and crying...seems like there is always a crying baby when i travel overseas.
Since the drinks are free on the flight i told myself i was going to ridiculously drunk to numb the pain that was from the tag team of the two cry babies...but all i had was a little bottle of wine. i spent most of the flight watching The Kite Runner, which was pretty good, and The Water Horse. The water horse movie was pretty lame, it was basically Free Willy but with scottish people and a plesiosaur instead of an orcinus orca.
From the flight from UK to Bahrain i slept most of the time. At least as much as i could since i was sitting next to my dad this time and his snores were shaking my chair.
My oldest sister was suppose to meet us at the Airport but she wasn't there when we got out of customs. We waited for about 15 minutes before my dad went an purchased a phone card to call her. But for some reason he couldn't get the card to work, and when he did get a hold of her the phone was busy...so about 45 minutes of waiting around we finally met up with my sister and her driver she had hired. If you didn't know already, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia...what a wonderful law.
After all the bags were stuck in the mini van we all decided to get something to eat at Senor Pacos. Its pretty much a tradition we go to this place whenever we are in Bahrain. Of course none of us knew how to get there. My dad thought he knew...but he didn't. We went around circles for like 30 minutes. Cheri was trying to talk us into going to another mexican place that she likes better, because its cleaner, the food is better, and the music is more professional...Cheri please, i don't care if Senor Pacos only serves poop on a stick...i'm going there to get a frozen margarita and a free hat. Actually i was kind of curious about the other mexican restuarant...maybe i'll hit that up when i leave.
Didn't get into Dhahran until 10 something...i was welcomed by my sister's three cats. She only had one cat before...but then realized her cat, Saudi, could die any day now so she got another cat, Sushi. She then 'cat sat' or something and ended up keeping her, Siagon, too. In my book you just have to be single and have more than 2 cats to be considered a crazy cat lady.
i took some pictures but i'm kind of too lazy to upload them on this unfamiliar computer and crop them and all that fun stuff right now. But maybe later i'll add some photos to this post since my writing is less than entertaining. Peace peace in the middle east.
Here is the stall i used in the philly airport...not sure why i took a picture, i was kind of tempted to write on the wall, because everyone else was doing it. In London Heathrow Airport i grabbed me a sandwich. It said it came with a salad, those few green leaves is their 'salad'.My dad's meal look a lot fancier. Some scrambled eggs with salmon, pretty sure i've never seen that combo before. At least i had a beer with my meal. It was technically morning, but its 5pm somewhere...
Another stop i wanted to make was a visit to the Jr. High School i went to when i lived in Saudi. It looked pretty different. There is a wall around the whole thing with a security box, new paint on the buildings, concrete torn up with grass and brick put down, and a bunch of shade things.
i also wanted to see the pond i built for my eagle project. It looked like crap, if i ever go back i'm going to rev that thing back...clean up that water and get a new pump and filter.
Below is the school rock. i'm sure there is some history about it but i can't remember it right now.
The sign here was another eagle scout project, sure it looks better than my pond now...but my pond in its prime would rock this sign like nobody's business.
