We're Back

Pictures are up now on Flickr, and I want to start you with a couple of things that were fun about Vegas.

1. A police officer had to tell a couple to attend to their baby when they both went to gamble and left the child in a stroller about 20 feet away.

2. People will wear anything in Vegas. When it comes to the tag line, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", I assume they mean the clothes that people wear.

3. Some woman walking down the street was screaming at people that weren't there. When she yelled, "Stop Harassing Me", the asian couple in front of us decided they needed to walk faster, but were wondering how they were harassing her.

End of Days

I am down to two days and change on my time in the Middle East, and while I am certainly not forgetting it, other people seem to be counting down the days as well. My current boss sends me an email each morning with the total time left until I get to Houston for instance.

I have now closed every account and returned everything that I need to return. The truck was the last thing on the list and I parted ways with it this afternoon.

I have had some things on my mind about moving to Houston and one of them is buying a house. I have decided that it is too much to ask of myself to find a house within 30 days of arriving, so I will look at houses with intent, but I will also scope out some apartments for the short term as well. I was also thinking about phone service. I return my company phone tomorrow afternoon and will be without phone service (for work) for about a week, more if I can't figure out who to talk to about getting a new phone set up. So I asked my new boss to look into it for me since he is in Houston and I am not.

Things I will miss about Dubai:
No real speed limit between Dubai and Abu Dhabi
High Speed Limits in most areas of town

Things I will not miss about Dubai:
Speed Bumps in the road (who thought that one up?)
Liquor Licenses

I will add to those lists as I settle in Houston.

5 Days and Counting

I am down to 4 days and some change until I move back to the States. Today I finished cleaning out the apartment and moved to a Hotel/Apartment. This place is better than the apartment I lived in and for roughly the same money. I should have just lived here. Nice place with breakfast in the morning and a bar, room service with a few items. They clean once a week. There are two televisions a bed, a couch, several televisions, dining table, a great kitchen.

Enough about the room itself though, I booked it for a 5 nights and I got the cheapest thing they had, a studio with a full sized bed. When I arrived the guy upgraded me and put me in a one bedroom with a king bed. I luck into a lot of great situations, including getting upgraded on flights and upgraded hotel rooms.

I am down to just needing to return my truck at the moment. Everything has sold and everything has been canceled. 5 nights, 3 days of work, 2 lunch outings, and a day of flying. Looking forward to getting home.

Pretty soon I will post a full write up of Dubai and then I will probably follow that up with posts about each country that I visited while I was traveling over here. Its been a good 16 months, but I am certainly ready to come home if for nothing else than that I don't have to have a license to buy alcohol (well, not a liquor license anyway).

Crisis Averted

I decided to check my itinerary today as I am scheduled to fly out tomorrow night back to Dubai. I am really happy I checked because there was something very wrong with my flight. Rather than book me on the non-stop flight back to Dubai, our travel guy booked me on a flight that stops off in Sri Lanka.

Seriously, who books anyone on a flight that stops in Sri Lanka right now?

Let me just book you on this great flight that stops in an active war zone where you will have to disembark the plane for 2 hours and sit in an airport in a mostly unstable country. I think that would be the best way to go.

So now I am on a flight that gets in 6 hours later than the original flight, but at least it doesn't stop in an unstable country.

Re-Organizing

In January we started some jokes around the office here in Dubai because we had heard that there were some changes coming to the company. None of us were totally sure what that meant. As time passed more and more we were joking about it.

In late March they changes were announced and they were pretty big. Quickly it was known that if you were a manager with the company your job was going to change significantly. The first round of announcements came out very soon after the first "change" announcement. But as time passed the announcements became more scarce and for people with the word "manager" in their title, time started to drag.

Work started to slow down, to the point now where I am only receiving 5 emails each night while I sleep compared to the 30 - 40 that I was getting prior to the announcements. Then the number of emails I was getting during the day slowed down. On top of that we aren't really making any decisions as a company until the whole re-organization is put together and as the new organization we start working, May 4th.

So far I have no place in the new company, but I was told by one person not to worry a few weeks ago. Turns out he couldn't have known anything as the structure for my current role hadn't been worked out yet. But that may have been a good thing, because now they are working out that structure and there are some vacant positions in other places. The most important of these to me is the US. What I know right now is that my name has been thrown to the people that are making those decisions, but I still don't know if anyone that is making the decisions has picked me for anything.

Overseas I would say my chances at maintaining my job are slim as there are a lot of other Inventory/Logistics Managers here that are far less expensive than I am, and I would assume the company is looking for the cheaper options for most of these jobs.

Within the next week or so I should know what I am going to be doing and where I am going to be living. I am hoping at this point that I am moved back to the States for a job, but will likely consider any job they throw at me.

Airplane Post

Hours 1 - 6
So far I haven’t done a whole lot. I watched 20 minutes of the Dark Knight, but since I have already seen it 20 times, because it has been to only good movie on my flights for the last 4 months, that I couldn’t handle it. I went on to watch another movie, but apparently it was so memorable that I have already forgotten what it was. After that I turned on Numbers. It is an ok television show that typically keeps me occupied on flights, but again, I have already seen the episodes that they have. However, this turned out to be pretty good because I ended up sleeping for about an hour and a half or two hours. I woke up, watched 3 episodes of Ten Items or Less. Not a terrible show, but only once did I laugh at something that happened. I got up to get a sandwich and a soda. At this point I have started Quantum of Solace, but decided to boot up the computer, write the beginning of a post and listen to a few episodes of the Typical Mac User.


Hours 6 - 12
Not a whole lot went on. I slept for a little while, watched a few episodes of Friends, the IT Crowd, and I watched a movie called Twilight. Not such a bad movie. I knew it was in theaters a little while ago, but from the sound of it, it was really a teen movie and I wasn’t terribly interested. But, being stuck on a plane for 17 hours will make you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. But, lets be honest, I watch a lot of bad movies. The point is that even though I thought this movie would be terrible, it wasn’t. While I was sleeping and watching television in complete darkness and silence, people sitting in the window seats found it was necessary to open the windows from time to time to see what was out side the window. I felt like standing up and screaming that it is the same thing you will see everywhere while we are in the sky for this long. It was really quite annoying.

Hours 13 - 17
Did a bit of emailing with Emily which kept boredom away. as I write this there is about an hour and a half left in the flight. I am now watching Get Smart and hoping that it keeps me interested until they announce that we are on our approach to Houston. I spoke briefly to the guy in 6K, pretty interesting guy that, as it turns out, is a rancher from eastern Colorado. His son recently took a job with Emirates Airlines, so he was out to visit. Turns out that he lives in the same building or set of buildings as a buddy of mine lives in. We talked about what he thought of Dubai and what he was able to see while he was there. He got to go to the Dubai World Cup, which I watched on television.

I have added a picture of my remote control for business class. I had to because of how awesome it is. If it were easier to do, I would have gotten a picture of my tv screen and possibly the 14 seats around me. As it turns out though, people in Business class take care of the bathrooms about the same as the people that are in coach.

That all. I wrote this entire post as well as took the pictures from the plane. I hope that it was at least a bit interesting to find out what people do during a 17 hour flight.

It Happened

Don't look for a lot of new pictures on Flickr from me for a while. Flickr, which was blocked with one internet service, is now blocked with the other. So I am searching for a new way to get pictures up. One way that I had used in the past to upload pictures, and watch television, was to use a proxy called Hot Spot Sheild. Sadly it has also been blocked.

Flying For Jerks

Some rules for flying:

1. If you cannot find your seat without the assistance of a flight attendant, you should probably not fly. This rule goes double for anyone who is holding an economy class ticket and slows down in business class just to make sure that their seat isn't there.

2. If you are flying in economy, act like it. I know it would be nice if we could all fly first class, but we can't nor do most of us pay for it. So, if you are sitting in economy, don't act like a jerk when the flight attendant tells you that they don't serve drinks prior to take off.

3. When the flight attendants ask you to put your tray table up and your seat in the upright position, just do it. It won't kill you to sit vertically for that first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of a flight.

4. Be considerate of other people on the plane. Not everyone wants to hear your conversations, and some people are actually trying to sleep, so shut up or speak quietly.

5. When the plane lands, just stay seated until people start getting off the plane. From experience, you aren't getting off the plane any fast by standing up the minute the plane lands.

6. If you can't carry your bag, it isn't a carry on. Please do not board the plane with a suitcase, the overhead and under seat storage was not meant for all of your luggage, just a few things you would like on the plane with you or things that you might need should your bag get lost.

Thus ends the suggestions I have for people when flying, but let me put this suggestion out there. I think flying should work like a reality television show. If enough people find what you are doing to be annoying or distasteful, you should be voted off the plane. This would mean that you would be immediately evacuated from the flight by parachute, or possibly put in the luggage compartment.

Starting Over

Last year I was a little pressed at the end of the year to make my miles for Emirates Gold. Part of the reason I took a short vacation at the beginning of December was to make sure that I got over the Gold limit for miles. But shortly after I took over the Asia Pacific Market and I flew a lot more miles. By the end of the year I had 72,000 miles, 50K is needed for Gold.

Today I looked at my first statement and I have 4,000 miles towards my 50K for 2009. If I do not achieve Gold this year I will revert back to a Silver member, but at this point I don't know if I can go back to being treated Silvery. I much prefer the treatment I get as a Gold member.

Hopefully I will have a couple trips back to the states that should easily get me over the barrier by the end of the year.

Beginning to Travel

Tomorrow I start my first trip of 2009. I leave here on Saturday and fly to Bahrain and then head on into Saudi. I will spent 3 days in Saudi. Tuesday afternoon I head back to Dubai, but just for a layover. After about 2 or 3 hours in the airport I will head to Mumbai for a little less than 48 hours. I get in at about 3 am Wednesday morning and have 2 days of training. Thursday afternoon I will head back to the airport and come back to Dubai.

Kicking it off with a bit of a bang, flying about 3 thousand miles in 5 days. Hope I don't get sick again.

A couple days after I get back to Dubai, my parents arrive in to town.

Perth/Singapore/Jakarta

First off, I have a few additions to make to the Worldwide Driving Rules.

Perth:
1. Actually, I don't have much to say. Everyone there drives pretty normally and doesn't get too upset about anything. Except for the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the rode, everything is normal.

Singapore:
1. Again, a country that drives on the wrong side of the road.

2. It seems to me that better directions are needed, but that is probably because I do not live or drive there.

Jakarta:
1. Basically follow the same rules as India.

2. When there is no longer any forward movement, get as far over onto the soft shoulder as you can and continue forward movement until you must force your way back in due to an obstruction.

Now on to the trip. I flew from Dubai to Perth late on Saturday night/early Sunday morning. As I have recently become a gold member with Emirates, they can't deny me space on the plane. As long as I have purchased a ticket, they must give me a seat on the plane. There were no seats available in coach when I arrived, so they gave me a business class seat. That was great. The seat lays completely flat.

I arrived in Perth around dinner time. I checked in to the hotel and then went for a walk to find something to eat. Interestingly, nothing was open. I found out later that everything closes around 5 or 6 pm every night. There are a few places that remain open, but for the most part, everything is closed.

I didn't sleep well, waking up around 2 AM and then falling back to sleep around 5 am both nights.

The office was nice there, everyone is great. On Tuesday after lunch, I made my way to the airport to fly to Singapore.

I arrived in Singapore around 9 PM and proceeded immediately got on the phone with work in the States. We had run into a few problems and we needed to get them resolved. I was up until about 2 AM and not everything was resolved, so I woke up at 5 AM to get back on the phone.

Then, it was in to the office. This is my second time there and all seemed well there. We went over a few methods for checking on inventory and spend most of the afternoon just talking about what was going on there.

I went to sleep that night about Midnight and woke up at 4 AM to shower and get to the airport for my flight to Jakarta.

The arrival in Jakarta was pretty smooth. I was questioned a bit about why I was there at immigration, but ultimately they let me through. I caught a taxi to the hotel which took about an hour.

Once I had checked in, I took a taxi to the office and found out that a buddy of mine from Dubai was also in the office there this week. We talked and all went well that afternoon. I had some interviews to get done and I got through the first one on Thursday afternoon. Thursday night I went to dinner with some guys and had some drinks. I probably stayed out a bit late considering I wasn't feeling great and hadn't slept a whole lot the whole week.

The second day in the office, I completed the second interview and then had a couple of meetings. For the most part it was a good trip to the office finding out exactly what is happening in my new area.

I flew home late Friday night/early Saturday morning. I arrived in Dubai at about 6 AM. Not a whole lot to do today, so I took a nap and ate lunch. I am now just trying to recover from this cold that I somehow got while not sleeping and traveling 24 hours on planes and flying a total of 13000 miles or so.

Athens: A Recap

I am packing up now and getting ready to head home to Dubai.

I have a few things to say about Athens that I previously haven't mentioned. Overall, the people here are great, but there was the occasional person that was put off by me asking directions. I had a map, but most of the streets don't have street signs, so in the nicest way I could, a few times, I had to ask someone who looked local for directions. The reaction to the question ranged from pure disgust while shooing me away to a really nice smile and pointing me in the correct direction.

I spoke with an American family staying the same hotel and they told me they were kicked out of a cab for asking the cab driver to take a different route than he was taking.

The Riots really put a quash on me going out at night. I didn't want to get caught in the middle of one and didn't dare take any pictures as I had already been taken to the police station for questioning because I was walking around during the day with my camera taking pictures. I did see a bit of it from the hotel at about 10 pm last night and it is mad that these people would destroy their own city like this, but at least they have some sort of gripe and they aren't doing it because the Broncos won the Superbowl.

The Hotel was great. The front desk people were very helpful. Same thing with the taxi company that I used. They admit they are a bit more expensive than the other taxi companies, but they all speak English and they give you the rate before hand, so it doesn't matter what route they take, it costs the same. They also took me on a route to point this out to me and to tell me how to get there from the hotel.

To anyone who might plan a trip to Athens, if you are coming by yourself, just come in for 2 or 3 days. It is more than enough time to hike around the city and see what you would want to see. If you are with someone, I guess you could plan an extra day or two. I would tell you to eat at the local restaurants, but that seems inevitable since in all of my hiking around, I only saw one McDonalds and the Hard Rock Cafe. Both of which were right in the major rioting area.

If you have an unlocked phone, buy a SIM card and a few Euros of talk time. This came in handy when I wanted to talk to the people at the hotel desk or call the taxi company. I spent 11 dollars and got enough talk time to last me.

They have really maintained their culture here and I would say the majority of people do not speak English, I wish I had learned a little bit of the language so I could have gotten my point across for certain things, like "where is the toilet?" "thank you" "hello" "goodbye" "where can I get a beer", etc. . .

Overall it was a good trip and I look forward to doing more quick trips like this as I have the opportunity. Next up Perth Australia, Singapore, and Jakarta Indonesia for work.

Frequent Flyer

Year to Date Miles Flown on Emirates Airlines: 48,800
Miles Needed for Gold Class Membership: 50,000
Miles to Fly before the end of the year: 15,000 (plus 3,000 if I go to Egypt)

Plus everything I fly between now and the end of the year is doubled for usable miles because of a promotion.

AHugeFrigginGuy in Athens Part

Day 2 is coming to a close and today I had another day of hiking around the city.

I started this morning wanting to get to the Acropolis and my plan couldn't have been better. Wake up early, get there as early as possible to avoid some of the major crowds, then move on to all the other stuff around it that I wanted to get to. This was a great plan. . .

That was put aside due to the fact that when the guy told me that they were closed on Saint Nicholas Day because they were on strike. I thought this meant that they were not open on the holiday, it turns out that it meant that he was telling me what day it was and that they were, in fact, on strike. I don't know how they could be on strike. I don't know what they want to be paid more for doing. All of these places have watchers, but they just sit in their seats and watch you walk in and out of certain areas. I assume they are there to make sure that you don't touch anything, but I can't really say.

I got a few pictures from the ground, and hiked up another hill to try to get some pictures that weren't as obstructed by trees and such. I got some advice before I left to bring a lens with an good zoom potential because I might have to take pictures of things that were up high that I couldn't get to, but based on the reading I had done, I was going to be right on top of most of this stuff. So I ditched the 300mm lens and just brought a good portrait lens and a macro lens. The point is that my pictures of the Acropolis are not great.

I did get around quite a bit more and explored Ancient Agora. There was a Greek temple that had been converted to a Christian church, and has now been restored to a Greek type temple. From up on the hill I climbed I got some great pictures of where all of these things are in comparison to the city. I think it is incredible that all of this stuff is right in the middle of the city and has been kept so well. I will say though, and you will see in some of my pictures next week, that there are people here that just don't care about it. Statues that are a thousand years old have graffiti on them. Some of the building have been spray painted with crazy Greek words (I assume they are words, some of them look like all vowels).

One of the last things I did today was go by the Olympic Stadium that was used for the first international Olympic games in 1896 and was used for a few things in the 2004 Olympics.

I put another map below to show the approximate locations of the places I saw today. Tomorrow I am going to be a bum. I have seen just about all I can within walking distance. I could get a cab around to other places, but I think I will just stick around this area and see if maybe there is something close I can check out.


View Larger Map

AHugeFrigginGuy in Athens

I flew into Athens yesterday and took a walk around the area where my hotel is. After that I stopped for a bite to eat. I really like the feel of eating out in the Eastern Hemisphere. You sit down and they don't rush you to order. They come by every 10 minutes or so to see if you are ready. After you order they serve you after about 20 minutes. Then they don't bother you for anything until after you are done eating, unless you grab their attention for something. After you are done eating they let you hang out. No one is trying to rush you out the door. I don't know why I haven't written about that before, but that is always my experience.

Today I woke up really early, ate breakfast, ran some reports for work, then started a 6 hour hike around the city. I started by going to the National Archeological Museum and spent about 2 hours roaming around there. After that I was just going to wander around and try to find something to eat, but I had walked so far that I decided to stop at the National Library, University and Academy for some picture. They are some of the younger (old) buildings in Athens. Then, since I had walked so far and my hunger had subsided, I decided to stop by Parliment. The building itself isn't that interesting, but the Tomb of the Unknown Solider is there and I stayed to watch the changing of the guard. They don't wear funny hats like the guys in London, but the shoes they wear are terrible. Think Crocs with fuzzy balls at the toe. And big fuzzy balls, not small ones.

Having spent so much time walking down to the area, I stopped at the National Botanic Gardens, then by Congress Hall and Congress Square. Finally I stopped at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It is an archeology sight and I got some great pictures there.

The Acropolis was closed today in honor of St. Nicholas Day. I will hike up there tomorrow. I assume that one sight will take an entire day just to explore. It will be about an hour walk there and an hour walk back, plus I would guess and hour hike to the top and 30 minutes or 45 down.

Below is a map.


View Larger Map

Pretty Bad

I have been pretty bad about updating recently, and for that I apologize. I hope that some of my funny little experiences have helped keep people interested.

The Boring:
Since I came back from the States, I have been working a lot. There have been some stupid things happening around the office, and around the company. At one point I was supposed to take over a different area, then it wasn't mine, now it looks like I might get it again. I have been traveling a bit, but for the most part they are trips that aren't much fun. I was in Saudi Arabia for 11 days, including a weekend. I was able to finish a bunch of books while I was there and felt good about reading. I am really happy in my Kindle purchase because of traveling.

The Annoying:
While I thought I would be coming home early, due to conversations I had with many different people, that will not be the case. For now I am trying to make a decision about if I want to come home next year, or if I want to stick it out a bit longer for the experience.

I mentioned it in the boring section, but I am a bit annoyed about it is my area, it is not my area deal. I am hoping that they come to a decision soon.

The Cool:
Again, I am kind of excited to pick up the new area because it would give me more places to travel every once in a while. It would be nice to go to places that look different than this. Sand and small bushes are ok, but they get a little boring after a year.

We have a very long weekend coming up and because of my boredom with the area, I have booked a 5 day trip to Athens, Greece. I got a pretty good deal on it. After that trip and some other trips that I have scheduled, I will certainly become a gold level traveler with Emirates Airlines. That is exciting because it means I get to use all the lounges and check in with the first class passengers regardless of how I am flying. The bonus to all of this is that I am earning a ton of miles that I can use with United when I move home and can hopefully have a bunch of free tickets when I get home.

Emily, the girl I am seeing not my sister, is coming to Dubai for Christmas and New Years. It will be a great week.

My parents then come at the end of January. That will be fun too.



That is it for now. I will try to update more often with what is going on.

A Cool Night

Tonight the weather was great for being outside. I went down to the bagel shop at the base of the building next door. I went there on Wednesday night and it was pretty good, and tonight I went down to have some coffee and hang out. While I was there, a guy came over to talk to me and as it turns out, he was the owner. Really a nice guy. I talked to him for a couple of hours and he told me about the plans for the store.

I asked him about some things and he offered to make some special bagels that I told him I liked. I am heading down there in the morning for breakfast and then off to get my new ID card. Hopefully it won't take too long to do that.

Some Things Just Don't Translate

On my way to the office this week in Damman, Saudi Arabia, I kept noticing a TGI Fridays. I kept thinking that it was odd to see that, but I guess food is food. Then it occurred to me that there was something that didn't make sense. The weekend here is Thursday and Friday. Why would anyone celebrate the end of the weekend?

Then today on the way home from the office, I said something something about the region VP driving a yellow Corvette and that you could see him coming from a mile away. Then I revised it to a kilometer away, but that isn't really that far. SO then I updated it to 5 kilometers away, but by that point it had lost its easy meaning.

Travel

A week from tomorrow I am making my way to Buenos Aires by way of Paris. I have a pretty long layover in Paris, but not really enough to get out and check it out, on the way there and the way back. I get back to Dubai on Sunday the 28th, then I work the 29th and 30th, and head back to the airport. I will then endure 17 hours to Houston and another hour to Midland. I will spend almost 18 full days in the States.

I am super excited to come home for a little while.

Six Months

I have hit the 6 month mark. 3 more just like it and I will be on my way home.

This month I didn't do a whole lot of anything interesting. I went back to Bahrain and to Saudi Arabia and it was a much different experience this time. On the way in I was stopped versus the first time I went where I was stopped on the way out.

I have been to India, which is something that I don't think I will ever forget. Depending on who you talk to, it is either the best time to go or the worst. The best according to the airlines who charge a ridiculous amount to fly there because this is when everyone takes their vacation to go home. The worst time because it is the rainy season there and it is a little depressing.

It did rain most of the time that I was there, but that wasn't the depressing part about it. The traffic is ridiculous and would make me go mad and just find a job next to my home. One day it took me an Hour and Half to go about 10 miles. Totally frustrating. Traffic is bumper to bumper and door to door. You can see my post on driving rules to see what the craziest parts were.

On top of that there are shanty towns built in people's front yards, in front of businesses, and in from of apartment buildings. Cows roam the streets, and there are stray dogs everywhere.

All that being said, it was a good trip and I am happy to have gone there and look forward to getting there again.