Bedou Tea

Another one of my favorite memories...

There was a camp move, and all our trailers were being slowly transported on large trucks to a new campsite. That means for most of the day you are in the middle of the Omani desert with no room, no bathroom, no office. Just a lot of desert, and if you are lucky, a seat in an airconditioned pickup truck.

After several hours of sitting around the campsite-to-be and doing nothing, I got inspired and took a walk with a nice thick book. A little ways away I found a random wooden crate and a cheap plastic blanket on a nice sandy incline. They looked like they had been there for a while. So, I laid myself down on the blanket and began to read. Maybe two hours later an Omani guy showed up in a truck and got out. I was embarassed, because it looked like this was his stuff.
To be honest I'm not sure how I didn't get overwhelmed with awkwardness and leave immediately, but somehow I ended up sitting and talking to the guy.

He was a tall, thin, weathered looking guy with a kind of scratchy voice. He was setting up a sheesha shack. There are always a couple of those a little ways around camp where omani guys go after work to hang out, light a camp fire, and smoke sheesha. I'm always jealous of them.

We had a rudimentary conversations with my small arabic vocabulary, and his equally small english vocabulary. With these conversations, it's a struggle communicating, but it's rewarding because every little bit you communicate feels like an accomplishment. I learned various things about him. He was a bedou from somewhere in the vicinity of Ibri. He had a problems with maggots getting in the eyes of his goats. His mother died a few years ago and he missed her because he was very close to her.

He made some tea, or some "shaayy" as they call it in arabic. So, I learned how to make Omani bedou tea. This version included a few tablespoons of loose black tea, water, a can and a half of condensed milk, a couple spoons of Nescafe, and about half a cup of sugar. All this he put into a beat up looking tin pot. Then he took one solid hunk of wood, poured something flamible over it, set it next to some large stones. He lit the wood and balanced the pot on the stones. I made myself the official stirrer while he hammered hunks of wood into the ground to make a windbreak for the future sheesha shack.

I admired the bag from which he took out his tea ingredients. It was a large ladies purse, in a purple velvet tigerskin motif. With sequins. He seemed completely oblivious to the irony. I guess to him it was just a thing that he could carry stuff in. Who knows where he got it from.

I was amazed by how he didn't in any way act wierd around me. This is Oman where it is not normal for men and women to mix. Yet he wasn't all formal and standoffish, but he wasn't sleezily overfriendly either. Maybe that is the way it is if you live in the desert and you are mostly on your own with a lot of goats? Any other human being...male, female, brown, white...you are just glad they aren't a goat.

After a cup and a half of tea I thought I should go back to camp. So got up and I took a bit of water and rinsed my cup out and wiped it clean. He smiled when I did that and said "same same bedou". And that was the best compliment I could ask for.

Arriving in Muscat

One thing I don't want to forget is what it is like arriving in Muscat after a vacation. It takes 20 hours to make it from the Philadelphia International Airport to Muscat. By the time I arrive, my feet are swollen, my hair is greasy, and my cloths have been on for 35 hours.

We walk down the stairs of the airplane to a shuttle bus. It feels a little bit like walking through an oven, even at 10pm. As soon as we step inside the airport there is a race to get a good place in the lines. But, even if I end up in the back it is okay because it is good people watching. There are always lots and lots of Indian men in khakis and plaid short sleeve dress shirts, which is a uniform for Indians the way jeans and a T-shirt is a uniform for Americans. I see tiny old Indian women wearing saris and heavy gold jewelry. They are careful about covering their legs and sometimes their hair but even an old women will show her midriff. There are Arabic men and women, wearing lots of perfume. The women are covered head to toe in black, but the hems of their cloaks are decorated with decadent gemstone designs. They usually have really fancy purses, things that look gaudy to my eye. There are also Brits scattered in the crowd and they look very tall and big. Also they usually look old and rich. Oil workers.

We go through immigration and customs and collect our luggage. The airport has a steril feel the way an airport usually does. Fluorescent lights. Muted tones. White walls. Then after the last baggage screening, you step through sliding doors and suddenly there are 100 million indian men pressed up against a velvet rope, staring at you as you walk down the "red carpet" of international arrivals. And there is noise. And the smell is a mixture of cleaning fluid, body odor, and strong perfumes.

I walk to the back of the crowd and look for Mahmood, our driver. I find him and we step out of the airport into the oven/steam bath of a Muscat night, and make our way to the car. Mahmood will patiently have a conversation with me in Arabic. It is a pretty basic conversation - How is your family? How was vacation? How long is the flight from America? Wow that is so long! My speech is always peppered with umms and errs and hand motions, but still it's a conversation. In Arabic!

Finally Mahmood drops me off at the staff house. This is in a posh residential neighborhood, full of large white houses, palm trees and fuchsia bougainvillea. I walk in, check the list of who is traveling through Muscat to see if there is anyone fun, and then I drag my stuff upstairs. If Pankitch is around he will share some dinner with me. He is a big, friendly, energetic guy from south India. He has very limited English. The last time he was explaining what's for dinner, he frowned and patted his head while searching for a word... "err.... Head! Head.. Fish head". Usually it is some form of rice and fish curry, and it is always VERY spicy.

Before I zonk out, I'll get a cup of tea and step outside or go up to the roof. I love the roof. The house has two levels of roof. I have to climb a ladder to get to the highest part, but then I can see over the tops of all the houses. I see the moon, the mountains, the ocean, and a few minarets that top the neighborhood mosques. Sometimes I see other people hanging out on their roof. I can look down on the street which is bathed in the eerie light of the street lamps. Sometimes there's a cat prowling, or a pair of Pakistani men walking, or a car driving by. Sometimes the guys working on the construction project next door are sitting around a campfire eating dinner.

It's nice, I like it.

Current Blog Strategy

I deleted those nasty comments and my post about them. I feel a little guilty for being a censor, but oh well.

I think my time in Oman is nearing its finish, and for that reason I'm going to kick myself in the arse to make some more posts and thus wrap things up in a nice symmetrical way.

Smoke Break

I'm on night shift. It's 2am and there is a full moon. I took a break outside with a guy from southern India who grew up in Saudi Arabia and a guy from Algeria who was chased from his hometown by terrorists. We talked about a French guy who claims that less than four cigarettes per day doesn't affect your health. I say he's full of shit.
Good times.

A Camel Shepherd

Yesterday I met a camel shepherd living alone in a two walled plywood shack in the middle of nowhere. In the shack is a small bed, a chair, a plastic mat, a coil of hose and a thermos. Next to this shack is a fenced in space with three female camels. Next to the camels is a small melon patch which is also fenced in to keep roaming camels out. The rest of the area is just empty desert. The only break in 360 degrees of flat horizon is three flaming smokestacks from a distant oil and gas separation facility.

Alfredo, a surveyor from the Philippines took me and Agata on this field trip to see some camels. Alfredo had talked to this guy earlier, so he expected us. We got there and said hi and the guy brought over a camel and we proceeded to have a 20 minute photo shoot involving every possible combination of: me, Agata, Alfredo, and the camel -- standing or sitting -- smiling, waving, or not realizing a picture was being taken. The camel was pretty pissed off, it kept braying like a donkey and nipping at the shepherd and us. A couple of times when it got really excited, in the middle of the excitement it would regurgitate up some food and the braying would stop while it chewed and then it would start up again.

Later on the guy offered us some tea. Black tea, no milk, very sweet. I tried to talk to him a little bit but my "book and TV learned" Arabic didn't mesh too well with his "camel shepherd from Baluchistan" Arabic. I managed to eck out that he's from Baluchistan, he's worked here for 17 years, this farm has 180 camels total, and a camels worth of meat is worth 1000 Omani Rials. He didn't understand me when I tried to ask his name.

We took a walk to the melon garden and had another photo shoot while holding various watermelons and zucchinis. He also got a kite flying for us, a kite he had made out of a plastic shopping bag and some twigs from a bush.

This setting was so crazy. If somehow I could take a snapshot of me in this setting and send it back 5 years to the me of the past, before I had ever heard of Oman, I wouldn't have known what to think.


Some more photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/selah/sets/72157608592064463/

Campmove

A few days ago we moved camp. This was the first time we had moved for eight months and I was dreading the packing and unpacking of the office, especially with our new cluster of computers, their complicated shutdown routine, miles of network cable and large multi screen displays. It was indeed a long day, but it ended up being okay.

In the days leading up to the move my schedule was a little off because I was switching from working nights. Because of this I easily woke up at 3:30am the morning of the move, got a shower and headed to the office where Nurul and Fabian, my respectively Bangladeshi and French coworkers were just about to begin the two page procedure for shutting down "the system". We shutdown, we unplugged, we packed, we found a tennis ball that had been lost for 6 months, threw things in drawers, threw things in trashcans. When everything was in boxes and shoved up against one wall, we went around and duck taped all the shelves and drawers shut.

As we finished packing our office, the first camp move trucks arrived and proceeded to load their cargo. Their cargo consisted of a 50 ton triple-wide trailers. The loading of these trailers is a balancing act worthy of a circus, complete with dangerous wobbling from side to side. The first truck made quite a spectacle as it tried to lift the mechanics workshop complex. Twice it got stuck with the workshop half loaded and the trucks front wheels lifted 8 feet in the air due to the weight of the load. All the while, a tiny man in blue coveralls is emphatically waving instructions to the driver. After the first failures, they had to get TWO trucks, one in front of the other like a train. They attached the miniature truck train to the workshop via 2inch thick steel cable and pulled everything 30ft forward so the origional truck could drive around to the other side and try again to lift the workshop, this time from behind. Forty five minutes later, the ordeal came to a conclusion as the workshop was finally loaded onto a truck, and then transfered to one of the larger carrier trucks. At the very moment of triumph it hit me that there were 19 remaining trailers and it was going to be a long day.


At this point I began the next phase of the day which consisted of wandering around and taking random pictures. First pictures of campmove related events... then close ups of big trucks... then mud splatters on the trucks.. then cool shapes in the sand. I made a friend with an Omani who I didn't recognize when he said "hey selah" and invited me for a cup of Omani tea. His name was Mubarak and he is a cargo truck driver. There was another guy too. Omani tea is pretty tasty, black tea mixed tasty herbs and lots of condensed milk and sugar. We chatted. One of the guys in his hometown has 48 children and four wives. Mubarak said he has seven children and then paused and corrected himself, "eight actually". He and the other guy showed me some pictures of their families as well as an ostrich and some camels. I shared a few pictures from of my fat cat Meow Meow and my friend Carolyn wearing an Oman t-shirt.

Later I crossed paths with Agata, the other girl on the crew. She's my age and from Poland. She just finished school in Poland and started working for our company just outside of London. After never having been outside of Europe, she's traveled to both Singapore and Oman in the last two weeks. She's still got the travel buzz. We proceeded to wander away from camp and spend several hours hunting shell fossils and taking pictures of plants and lizards. Its special to find someone who likes doing that as much as I do.


When we wandered back through camp, half of the skids had been loaded and left. Ten trucks, each with its 50 ton trailer, had begun a three hour journey to the new campsite at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. And as the crow flies this new campsite is actually only 9 miles away. We caught a ride to the new campsite and took a detour around the convoy, but when we arrived we lost our air conditioned truck seats to some stranded vibrator drivers who needed to start their shift. By this time it had become a hot day, so one of the water truck drivers took pity on us pale skinned females and offered us the air conditioned cab of his water truck. The cab was 10 ft off the ground. He had a cassette of Omani music, so we sat there and watched the empty desert with Bedouin tunes playing in the background.

Later in the day, we watched the loading process in reverse, as they set up our new camp. Me and Agata sat in the shadow of yet another truck and sipped orange drink juice boxes and ate omelet sandwiches. A couple younger Omanis walked by us. One stopped and pointed at my backpack and said "I am drinks"... "I am very drinks" and then looked at me. A couple seconds of silence passed before I realized what he meant. I felt real cool asking "are you thirsty" in Arabic, except I'm sure it sounded more like "it is you are turstee?" with a heavy accent. I gave him a bottle of water, and he had a drink and gave it back and continued on his way.

Unpacking the office was a workout, but it put me in a happy energized mood, the same way a long run or a soccer game does. Our nightshift QC's joined us for the unpacking and afterwards our QC posse sat outside on the boxes that had held our computers and watched the sun go down. We contemplated what we'd do if the electricity didn't come back. We wouldn't be able to go back to work so instead we'd have to go do something else fun like have a campfire in the desert. But alas, the electricity did come back on and we did have to go to work processing a 24 hour backup of data.


Once we got the computers running... we finished the night off with some beers and Ricard at the camp bar. Everyone was a little extra rowdy from the excitement of the day. Any break of routine is excitement out here.

All in all a very nice day.

Morocco Pictures

I just got back from a three week trip around Morocco with Matt, Marta, and Carolyn. I got engaged in Fez. I was offered pot 20 times on the way to Al Hoceima. I learned how to haggle in Marrakesh. I got my ass kicked climbing Jebel Toubkal. I picked a giant sea slug off of a rock in Oulidia. Take a look...

A Few More Days in Bahla

My trips to Bahla are a tad strange. I give Soleman a call on the GSM and he invites me with enthusiasm to come see his family... always saying "come sooner", "stay longer", "we can't wait to see you". But its Shehar his second wife who actually takes care of me, and I have no idea how Shehar feels about it.

But I go anyway hoping I'm not being too rude or too much trouble... because what a chance! To spend a few days living with a conservative arab muslim family. Here is a culture that is as different from mine as is possible to find on this planet.

Something I've found out is learning a second language is ridiculously hard. I severely underestimated the difficulty. Its so frusterating for me because what I really want from these visits is to make a connection and a friendship with someone there, but instead my interactions more like that of a 3 year old in a awkward 25 year old body. I can barely speak. I can't do much except get in the way. After a "salaam alaykum" most people just ignore me, or maybe stare at me a little bit.


Oh well, maybe I've failed doing much in the way of making personal connections. Being an observer is still very cool.

I got to observe a small marriage cerimony. It was the signing of the marriage contract, not the wedding itself. Maybe 120 people attended. The men and women sat separated by 50 yards. We sat outside at night on a mat surrounded by date palms and ate a dinner of fruit and rice and tasty hunks of beef.

I got to see the daily routine. Always warm sweet chai in the morning along with some fried bread and other goodies. Meals are laid out on the floor on top of a plastic table cloth. Everybody shares the same plate and eats with their hands. A couple water glasses get passed around and shared. The food is always good and served on a humongous mound of rice. The baby, Harif, is always trying to get attention by knocking over water glasses or grabbing handfulls of food, and everyone helps deter him, and otherwise taking care of him. I'm really impressed by how good the kids are at helping out with babies and other household chores. I was never that good.

I got to see the comfortable afternoon routine of walking around and going for visits to the houses of neighbors and friends, where you are served your classic Omani "kahwa" and dates. And usually a big plate of bananas and oranges and mellons to go with it. Your host will sit and cut up oranges and feed you slices until you say "bas!", "enough!". I saw how every house I visit is filled with moms and grandmoms and daughters and aunts and kids of all ages. You are never lonely in these houses in Bahla.

I listened while Mubarak, Soleman's 18 year old son from his first wife, played a collection Eminem and other American rap as he drove me to the airport. It was full of lyrics concerning "taking sexy babes to the backseat of cars" and "telling white america to fuck off". I'm pretty sure he didn't understand the lyrics. And then it was a little bizzare to watch him piously pause this music when the evening call to prayer began.

I got to watch 15 year old Lubna, Shehar's neice, reciting the Qur'an while Shehar held the Qur'an and corrected her where she forgot a word, or said the word wrong. Shehar told me in watered down arabic that "Lubna is very good in school, she memorizes the Qur'an. These other two nieces are no good they don't memorize the Qur'an." Lubna told me shes still working on it, shes only got about 30 pages memorized so far.

I spent a whole lot of time watching Shehar. I wonder what her life is like. I wonder what goes on in her head. What makes her happy, what makes her sad. I wonder what she thinks about having a strange and scandalously dressed American dropped off at her house. I wish I could talk to her. She seems like the perfect Omani mom. She's about 5 years older than me, could be my older sister. Her life is sooo different from mine.

Let me make it clear, although this family is not too sure what to do with me, they are very kind to me. They give me the best bed, the best food, the front car seat. They take me to the salon where Huda spends an hour and a half drawing beautiful henna patterns on my hands. They take me for walks and visits to neighbors and always pour me lots of kahwa and chai. I wish I could figure out how to give something back.

Well... shukran my Omani family. Shukran.

Hitch from Hell - Positive Update

Since I last wrote a couple things happened...

Number one:
Out of the blue, I was served an absolutely delicious bowl of tomato soup. For the two weeks leading up to this, every day the soup consisted of flour, salt, and hot water. Stir in a few shreds of carrot and call it carrot soup. Add a couple mashed peas, call it vegetable. But then, suddenly, this delicious bowl of tomato soup with perfectly crisped croutons and a hint of rosemary. I exclaimed out loud when I tasted it and Mark said "oh yeah, Tak is back". Tak has been a cook here for more than 10 years. He's an older guy from somewhere near Nepal. He's missing a lot of teeth, and doesn't speak much english, but he's got enough to smile and have a conversation when he sees you. "Hi... how are you?... good good... night shift? yeah night shift.... very good [smile, nod, laugh]... have good night". He works way too much as do all of our kitchen staff, but for some reason he makes effort to make us exceptionally good soup. And he likes doing it. I'm touched.

Number two:
In our office we finally got it together and asked our boss about getting another person or two and he was great about it. He says he gets a lot of resumes from local people and he'll send us some. I'd be happy to actually have an Omani in the office. I'm happy to have my job, but part of me thinks its dumb that I get flown halfway around the world to do it. Its not like its THAT hard. I'm convinced you could take a reasonably bright person, who never stepped foot in a university, and make them a perfectly good QC after not too long. Especially in this part of the world. Hell, I'd say the same thing for a lot of jobs.

Hitch from Hell

This has been the hitch from hell.

I've gone from sort of liking my job to hating it.

The workload and the complications in this office have multiplied out of control due to a complicated prospect, an unneccesarily complicated new hardware system, a messy buggy new software system, and our crew starting 24 hour operations. And nobody, clients or bosses, cares or aknowledges our difficulties and it feels like there is little hope of improving the situation.

And on top of that the food has gotten absolutely terrible. The cost of food has been skyrocketing in Oman, and it shows.

And even worse, I'm an ass for complaining about anything, cause every day I see several indians working 16 hour days doing menial jobs for a fraction of what the rest of us get paid. They see their family for one month out of the year and will probably be stuck in this situation rest of their life. And they choose to do this, so obviously the alternatives are worse.

God the world sucks.

Well I guess I'm learning lessons about life. Sometimes things just aren't the way they "should be" and you don't have the power to change them, and oh well - get used to it. You do what you can. Keep things from completely falling apart. Try to fix something small. You get paid. And if you get the chance you get the fuck out.

Argh...

Oh well, in five days I go on vacation. I'll spend a few days visiting the family I know in small-town Oman. And then I'm off to meet Matt and Carolyn and Smarta for three weeks in Morocco. Hooray.

And at least there are lots of friendly/hungry camels around during nightshift. That is a good thing.

The Laundry Guy

Yesterday one of the Indian laundry guys nervously opened the door to the QC office, looked around, and then started to close it when I said "hi?" to see what he wanted. "Ravi?" he said and stammered something I didn't understand. I said "Oh Ravi just left, umm i think he should be back in a few ..." and then realized the guy didn't understand what I was saying. So I just said "Ravi" and nodded my head in a positive way and motioned to the guy to sit down and wait. He stood there and waited a few minutes for Ravi to come back and after an akward pause I went back to doing whatever I was doing on the computer.

It turns out Ravi was typing a short letter for him in english to send to his bosses in Muscat to ask for a raise. His total salary is 52 OR ($140) a month and he says hasn't gotten a raise since 2001. He's goes home to see his family for one month and comes back for another 12-15 months of working 16 hour days in a country where he endures racism and 130F heat.

And he probably has kids my age. It makes me feel dirty. Never never never should I complain about my job!

Sheesha with Palestinians

Last night I stayed out till 1:30am with two Palestinians. We smoked sheesha and ate filafel while discussing religion and conflicts between Islam and the West. Groovy, no?

It was a hot and humid night as is every summer night in Muscat. We ate outside at a dimly lit coffee shop. We sat crosslegged on long wooden benches with cushions. The shop was mostly patronized by Omani men in robes and hats, with your occasional indian or oriental lady thrown in. There were fans spraying out mists of water to cool people off. I had a dinner of filafel pita sandwiches, extremely salty pickles, and tea with fresh mint. I very much appreciated this after 20 hours of airplanes. Afterwards we shared a water pipe of apple sheesha tobacco.

I was with Abdul my Palistinian/Jordanian friend and unofficial Arabic teacher, and Mashdi his Palistinian/Kuwaiti friend of 10 years who lives in Muscat. Mashdi grew up in Kuwait. His father was smuggled into Kuwait from the West Bank when he was 16. This was in 1956 and Kuwait was a crazy place. There weren't many roads and no one was allowed in after dark or they'd be shot. I wondered what conflict inspired all this security, and it turns out they were protecting themselves from Bedouin raids, as that was common place back then!

I'm not sure what led to it, but Abdul asked me if I believe in God. Usually I dodge the question, but this time I didn't. I said "no, not really". They were worried about this. They encouraged me to go to church on Sundays. They didn't care if I was Muslim, Christian or Jew, but they wanted me to have some monotheistic religion in my life. Mashdi encouraged me to read the Koran "as if it were an Agatha Christy novel". They both started telling me stories from the Bible/Koran/Torah. It was funny to hear them with the Arabic names, Yakhuub instead of Jacob.

I asked Mashdi just what it is that Islam brings to his life. He said morals. Because of the Koran he would never think of stealing or cheating on his wife. I was surprised he didn't say anything about companionship with Allah, or the afterlife. Those are the things I'd expect to hear from a devout Christian in the US.

I tried to explain that I am not morally bankrupt even though I don't have religion and the West is not morally bankrupt because it doesn't have religion. And actually the west does have religion, around 60% of the people in America go to church regularly (so says the NYT). I said you shouldn't judge the people in America by rap videos and movies, it's misleading.

Mashdi told me that Islam teaches peace and mercy and respect for women. He said Muslims do not support Osama bin Ladin. He doesn't like the picture that gets painted of Muslims in the news, its not fair that Americans think Muslims are all terrorists.

I told them how sad I'd be to never play sports or go running or go swimming. Mashdi insisted such things are fine for women to do in Islam. The Prophet Mohammed's and his wife used to run footraces. But I never see women do these thing in Oman, they wear too much clothing and don't like to go outside.

When Mashdi dropped me and Abdul at the office, him and Abdul said bye the way Arabic men say goodbye. They kissed eachother's cheeks and noses several times. Abdul looked at me and laughed and said "in America you think this for gays". I laughed and said, "yes it would be a little strange to see in the US".

We didn't come to any big conclusions that night, and it wasn't the most original conversation but it was fun. Fun to be with people eager to have discussions that go on till the restaurant closes, and fun to play my small part in much bigger world issues.

Sitting in the Heathrow Airport for Five Hours Hooray

Another hitch down and I'm on my way to Philadelphia. When I see it halfway down the list of Terminal 4 departures and think that I'm going there, I involuntarily smile. Philadephia has become an icon for me. When someone on the other side of the world asks me where I am from, I say Philadelphia. When people want to visit America, I recommend they go to Philadelphia. I make a point of having fanatical Philadelphia pride. I once lost a case of beer on a bet that Philadelphia was the birthplace of grunge music. I dont know much about grunge, but Philadelphia is the best city and all good things must come from it.

And on another note...

I had a special moment when I was leaving crew. I was driving in a dusty landcruiser truck with an Omani, a Southern Indian and a Bangladeshi. They all speak Arabic pretty well, but to be nice to me they put on the American radio station. What is an "American" radio station when you are in the desert, 400k from the capital city in Oman? It started with some gangsta rap, then transitioned into 80's movie soundtracks. Then the DJ, an older British guy with a gravely cockney accent, got on and announced the answers to a quiz about American Indians. This was followed up by a 70's folk tune.

All these pieces put together without a touch of irony let me know I'm very far away.

Looking out the window also let me know I'm very far away. A big flat empty brown landscape broken up by the occasional road crossing or oil pipeline.

And that was my moment.

Pictures from France

Pictures from both Paris and Arles...enjoy!

A Cold Day in Arles, France

I should have realized bull fighting was going to be difficult for me to watch, but I didn't think about it until I got there. I wasn't even sure they were going to kill it, they don't usually in France. But then I saw blood streaming down from the several spear-ladden streamers it had been stabbed with. I cried watching the first bull go down. But I got desensitized watching the next four - kind of creepy how quickly that happens.

The bulls were so mad, fighting desperately, trying to get the spears unstuck from their back and trying to get the fuckers that put them there. It killed me that they kept going for the stupid red cape instead of the tiny man standing there fully exposed. This is a lesson in brains over brawn.

Watching something fighting with every ounce of its strength for its life and losing is intense.

At least it wasn't a gladiator fight. This arena is old enough that there have been gladiator fights in it.

The rest of the day was an attempt not to freeze to death. Yesterday I moved from my posh hotel to a youth hostel where they lock you out from 10am to 5pm. Today was a cold cold day.

I found temporary refuge in a basement-like internet cafe that turned out to be run and patronized almost exclusively by Arabs. I half-heartedly read the news and wrote some emails. I was more focused on listening to people speak and picking out what I could understand. The hourly price was worth it for the arabic and the shelter rather than the internet.

As I left the cafe I talked to the cashier and was instantly surrounded by 5 arabic-speaking men who were shocked to hear an American tourist speak arabic. This happens regularly. I think me being an attention whore is a significant part of my drive to learn Arabic.

An hour of walking around in the cold later I happened upon a PUBLIC LIBRARY!! This was a gift from god to a person who hadn't warmed up since sitting on a cold stone ledge watching a bullfight five hours earlier. Oh it was warm!! And had cozy couches!!! I can't tell you how fortunate I felt to be sitting there and reading a newspaper.

Now I'm here using internet at a crowded McDonalds on a rainy night. There is techno blairing just outside on the main street because of the torreador festival going on this weekend. I have one chicken nugget left.

I leave you for now..... Love, S E L A H

Paris and Massy

Well, I finally picked a place to go, and I'm on the train to there right now. Arles, near Marseille, in southern france. It's known for bull fighting, Roman ruins, and Van Gogh. He painted several of his famous paintings in Arles and then went crazy there too. More about Arles when I have actually spent some time there. For now I'll write a bit about my month in Paris.


So... Paris... it's pretty cool. It is all those things that Paris is supposed to be. Lots and lots of patisseries, and cafes with excellent bread, quiche, coffee and tarts. Miles and miles squared of beautiful old buildings with wrought iron balconies. Second hand bookshops and antiques. Lots of tourists. Lots of people in general. Beautiful city parks. Nice public transportation. I saw the big sights, the Notre Dame cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc du Triomphe, and lots of other stuff too.

Massy, the small town in the suburbs where we stayed, wasn't that bad either, despite the bad things I had heard about it from coworkers (boring and ugly). You didn't have to walk far to find cute neighborhoods with cute old stone houses. The yards had patches of pretty spring flowers, like violets and crocuses, interspersed with the grass. I found a big gypsy camp on the side of the highway. On the other side of the Massy train tracks we and Anna fond a nice patisserie, and an slightly shady, but delicious restaraunt/bar with an excellent chicken cous-cous dinner, an assortment arabic speakers, and no shortage of wine in carrafes.

Argh, I have several bits and pieces of stories and things I did that I'd love to share, its always a struggle to decide what to write...

Luxembourg Park in Paris is my favorite city park ever. It's very manecured, with lines of trees cut into perfect squares and such. But what I love is that there are there are people doing all sorts of things I love to do, all in one place. There are people playing tennis, a pavillion of people playing chess, some with spectators. People having tasty picnics of bread, wine, and cheese. Ducks, pidgeons, and sparrows begging for food. Pick up games of basketball. People sitting in the sun reading. People sipping coffees at outdoor cafes. If there was one drawback its that the park was crowded, but hey, the more people there to enjoy it, the better.

To finalize our last day in Paris, me and Anna decided to walk to the eiffel tower to see it lit up at night. It started raining about halfway, but what the heck, we were almost there. Except the eiffel tower is very big, which makes it look decievingly close. We got there eventually, and it was big and beautiful and lit up and worth it, despite the fact that we were wet and shivering. As we walked away they lit up flashing lights over the whole tower, so the whole thing from top to bottom was sparkling. It looked like a firework, and it was a wet night so it reflected of all the puddles and wet cars and windows as we walked away.

On another note, don't ever order Andoullette unless you are prepared. I'm pretty confident that I can eat anything, so, even though I was feeling queezy from too much wine the night before, I just picked something randomly off the french menu, "something something andoullette something". I ended up with one large sausage of smoked pig intenstines. Tripe tastes like horses smell. And horses smell like horse poop. I TRIED to eat it, believe me, but in the end the tripe won.

Alright, well that is enough for now. I'll have some new stores about Arles soon. And I'll probably post a big slew of pictures at the end of this trip when I'm in the airport waiting for my plane to Oman.

Where Should I Go?

Sorry, this is pretty much shameless bragging, but here goes...

After I finish my month long course in Paris, I'm going to take another week in France for vacation, but I need help deciding where to go. I think I will head to the south of France. I like water, old stuff, mountains, and smaller towns. I've narrowed my destination to three places. 1) Frejus 2) Hyeres 3) Corsica.

Frejus and Hyeres are both towns of about 50,000 people on the Mediterranean coast in France. Frejus has some nice looking Roman ruins. Hyeres has a history from 300BC and is a bit less touristy than Frejus. Corsica is a french island just west of Italy. It would be a bit harder to get too, but sometimes remoteness makes a place interesting. And I enjoy ferry rides.

Well, if you have any input on this difficult decision, leave me a comment. Thanks :)

In France for a Month

Indeed I am... I'm staying in a hotel on the outskirts of Paris and taking a class on geophysics software.

Its wierd living in a hotel. I've kind of wanted to try after watching the movie Lost in Translation. I just got back from foraging for breakfast. Success!.. I aquired some napkins, teabags and butter. Along with that a couple bread rolls pocketed at dinner. Too bad I lost my tiny jar of marmalade swiped from yesterdays breakfast buffet, or tomorrows breakfast would have been a perfect. You see, I'm not yet sure if my company is paying for hotel food.

On another food related note, they served snails for lunch today in the company cafeteria. Not fancy snails separated from their shell and cooked in butter in a fine restaraunt with a glass of wine on the side. No, these snails looked like they had been picked up off the ground, lightly rinsed, thrown in a steamer for 10 minutes and then put on my plate to cool. They still had moss and bits of seaweed on the shell. They still had that hard covering plate that protects them when they retract back into their shell. They were firmly stuck in their shell too. After seeing me struggle, a random french guy in the cafeteria recommended I use a toothpick to get them out... but when I tried, they broke the toothpick, that is how stuck they were. I had to get a good stab and pry on them with a metal fork. When I did succeed, they were really good. Like an extra meaty clam.

After my lunch of snails, we went, as we do every day, to The Coffee Room. How very French! Attached to the cafeteria is a separate room just for coffee. In it are some standing tables where you can be served an espresso or a tea, and a little bit of chocolate. Lunch is very leasurly here. In fact you can't get back into the training room without a badge before 2pm. I love it.

I went for a jog yesterday, its about 15 minutes to a small town center. Its very cute. It reminded me of Milford, New Jersey. Cute little shops and houses and people walking on the street. It was evening and just about everyone had a pair of bagguettes in a plastic bag. I assume they were walking home to dinner.

Not too many exciting France stories. Mainly I've just been learning software.

A Random Day in Seismic QC

Perhaps you'd like to hear about a random day of mine in Oman...

There are three of us in the QC office now, Atila the Turk and Nurul from Bangladesh. Today, apart from QC-ing the daily data, we spent some time planning for our next prospect. This prospect will be near to the location of our previous prospect. It will be down south where there are camels, and vegetation taller than 2 feet. No sand dunes though.

I got into a heated argument today with Atila and Nurul. We were figuring out how to go about renumbering receiver lines for this new prospect. I tried to explain why I thought the method they had planned wouldn't work, and why we need to do it a different way, but they insisted it would work. I attempted to test it and ran into about 8 million difficulties along the way, finally got them sorted out, and now the jobs are running on our computers so I just have to wait.

In the afternoon me and Nurul finally sorted out exactly where our disagreement was. He thinks attributes get created and applied to seismic traces according to the receiver line and receiver station we have in our raw data, whereas I'm almost certain they get applied according to the channel number, and only the channel number. Anyway we will find out when the jobs finish running (although chances are I'll find some thing wrong with the jobs after they finish and have to run them once or twice again).

This afternoon I took some time out to study Arabic. I'm learning different versions of the verb "to be". I've been walking around surveying people on what is the correct way to say "I was not there" or "I will not be there". So far, I've got 5 and 3 different ways to say each of those respective phrases. It’s because my sample population comes from various places in Turkey, Jordan, Oman, and Tunisia. Arabic is notorious for sounding very different in different countries.

Unfortunately I didn't get any time to continue my investigation into the cause of inflation in the American economy (that supposed to sound half sarcastic). I have a dream that I want to get economics Ph.D. one of these years so I've been spending time understanding the hell out of supply and demand curves, diagramming the cost and benefit of subsidies, and now, understanding how inflation happens.

Another thing I didn't get around to doing today was making notes for the course I'll be attending in France, after my next leave. That's right, for the first 4 weeks of my next hitch I'll be staying in a hotel just outside of Paris learning about a new processing software that our company intends to switch over to. I really want to spend some time thinking of just how we will be using this software, and know what parts I should have 100% clear. Switching our office over to new software is going to be a big job. I'm a little frightened, but also a little looking forward to the challenge.

Now that the day is over, I don’t feel like beer, so instead I’m going to go watch a cheesy movie in the mess trailer staring Vin Diesel as a muscley Special Forces officer on a mission to baby-sit 5 kids, during which he will use discipline to turn their lives around for the better. The Pacifier. Oh yeah. Then I’ll go to bed.

Okay, so there you go, a pretty typical, if slightly more interesting than usual, day as a QC on a seismic crew.

Happy New Year Updates

It has been a while. I have two overdue things to write about.

1)I finally got to see small town Oman! I visited the family of one of my co-workers, Soleman. They live in Bahla, about a half hour from Nizwa. I got tobe "that crazy foreigner". In one situation, a kid on the street saw me and proceeded to run into his house, yelling "ingleezi, ingleezi!!". Then his 3 siblings all came out to stare. I ate lots of "Kahwa" and dates. I had to try to speak Arabic. Finally a place in Oman were people don't speak much English. It's hard to find.

I was struck by how not-busy life is in rural. Other things that struck me: People don't have furniture. Everyone, babies and grandmas alike, just sit on the floor. Eating is very different too. The family just spreads some newspapers on the floor and they all eat from one big plate. They grab a handful of food, usually rice and something. They squish the food into a lump in their fist and eat that. I like it! And it certainly makes for fewer dishes.

2) For Christmas I went to Mexico to a town that takes two days of traveling to get to from El Paso, and that has cows and chickens roaming freely through the streets. The most exotic experience of this trip was purchasing meat. There isn't much fresh meat in the stores, so we got the idea in our head to buy a goat and have it slaughtered. I came down the morning we bought it and there indeed was a little cute white goat tied to a tree, happily eating grass. Then they tied it up, slit its throat, and we watched it die for the next 15 minutes. That was intense. I always wanted to see something large be killed, I feel morally obligated because I eat meat. It wasn't fun.

I got into Muscat today at 3:45am. Emirates Air just started a direct, 13 hour, Houston to Dubai flight, which makes my trip easier. Although, I spent 7 hours last night wandering around the Dubai Airport.