a post of schizophrenic proportions a.k.a. the boredom of waiting

we came in to work today as we are pavlovianly trained to. alarm goes off, hit snooze a few times, roll out of bed, brush teeth, get dressed, and wander down to the car in a typical zombie-state. we knew there was nothing for us to do at work today. as mechs, we are waiting for the controls and electrical people to catch up. we came in on time because we thought there'd be a meeting about when we are going to start up the second unit. there wasn't, so here i sit with exactly fukk-all to do. so, i'll catch you up on some random, unimportant things that have been on my mind. alone they would not be worth a post, but together they will join forces to flesh out something possibly worthy to fill the screen.

• last week, TheMech drove us to work. when he'd gotten to the car, our driver was complaining of a migraine, though due to his flashy duds, we guessed he was at the disco all night and was just in no shape to drive. TheMech is always calling our driver out for driving too fast or overtaking when he shouldn't. i'm not as concerned, but i do agree, there is room for improvement. TheMech has taken defensive driving courses in the UK and is a good driver. about 30 minutes from site, there is a stretch of road where they hide a speed camera on occasion. TheMech knew about this, but thought the speed limit was 100 km/h when it's actually 90 km/h. maybe a kilometer after the speed trap, we pull off onto another road that goes towards the site. here, there is a police stop where they stop you if you were speeding. we got stopped. neil pulled over and gave the army guy his british license and his qatari driver's license. after some confusion, TheMech got out to talk to them (usually speaking english gets us off at checkpoints). i'm guessing the army guy didn't understand english or something because that got us nowhere. TheDriver got out and started arguing with the guy, arabic pomposity ensued, then TheDriver came back asking for 150 pounds ($30) for the fine). TheDriver went back over to the army guy and talked some more, then came back and said it was ok. the army guy didn't know how to send the ticket (for points) to the UK, so he let us off, and that was that.


• why do toilets take so long to fill up? inside is the inlet valve controlled by the float. why can't there be like a mad in-rush until the float stops it? i was just thinking about this the other day, not sure why. the site toilet was probably running and i wanted it to stop


• thursday night, TheMech, TheSiteLead, TheFemaleElectrical and i went out to dinner at a chinese restaurant at the top of the sofitel hotel on the corniche. i ordered spicy beef salad EXTRA SPICY. i specifically said, "i want you to make me cry!". i ended up eating my words, or rather, i would've if any cells in my mouth could function as they were supposed to. good GOD, they made it hot. what's even worse is TheMech said he wanted his soup the same way. mid-swallow, i said something that he apparently found damn funny, because he choked and got the crazy hot magma in his nose. he was tearing like mad. we couldn't finish our meals. stupid boys! i asked TheFemaleElectrical to see her phone, i wanted to text her manager. she didn't think i'd go through with it. i texted her manager, as her, "i'm really tired of this field engineering life. i'm not cut out for it. i think i'd like to work at KFC or mcdonald's. can we talk about this sometime?"... then to her disbelief, i hit "send". she then texted him to apologize for her stupid colleagues playing a prank. after dinner we tried to get into a few clubs and were turned away because we didn't have reservations. one, called "montreal", was ALMOST going to let us in, but some nerd-looking dude who was apparently the manager or something looked out the door, and we didn't make the cut. the bouncer was fukking HUGE, complete steroid junkie with a painted on shirt. TheMech says he has "sugar muscles". when it was clear we weren't going to get in and with a bit of the liquid courage kicking in, i told sugar muscles that he was very pretty and i loved him very much in arabic. he didn't kill me, but i don't think he liked it. stupid boys! after getting turned down, we went back to the hotel bar to figure out what to do next. a round of tequilas was ordered to induce creativity. TheFemaleElectrical doesn't drink, so i had hers as well... then we had a second round. we decided on going to the cabaret i went to several weeks ago until 4:30AM on a work night. TheMech was going to call it a night, but i peer pressured him with typical machismo insults (pussy, old man, punk) until he caved. TheSiteLead got a call and dashed off, so it was the three of us on our way. we were meeting some other guys from site there. and that's the next story


• at the cabaret, we met three guys from site, two of whom i'd gone with before. they were throwing back drinks, the cabaret was really smoky, food was ordered, TheMech and i got beers while TheFemaleElectrical got a pop. after a few drinks and the tequilas coursing through our veins, we ended up dancing with the girls. i REALLY shouldn't dance, especially to egyptian music. it was ugly. and for your amusement, i've posted the video that TheFemaleElectrical took of our inebriated arses dancing like fools. i'm not sure why she turned the camera sideways half way through. stupid girls!

that's enough embarrassment for now.