new ZUMEL post

i'm currently writing up a post about the Delta Hash House Harriers Inaugural Black-n-Yellow Taxi Relay. it was a fabulous time, great stories, but trying to get it all down is tough, so much to remember that the race itself was making blurry. until then, there is a new post up at the ZUMEL.

i've been dubbed

yesterday, i made my friday trip to ThePC to meet up with the hash group. once there, we had a few beers and realized that there wasn't really enough to people to run the hash, so we "hashed" to TheKiwi's place where he had some lamb chops he wanted to cook. the turnout is low lately because a lot of the people are away on summer holiday or R&Rs. we've agreed that we will definitely run next week, as that will probably be the last time most of us will be together until sometime in september.

anyways, back at TheKiwi's we drank beer, talked about the hash, told stories about our jobs here in egypt and where we've been before. before we started the grilling, TheEweTrollop called for a hash circle. we all agreed it was a good hash, brisk but not exhausting. TheKiwiMike was called into the circle and was called out on FINALLY making a hash (and he made the one we didn't run). then i was called into the circle for the naming ritual. normally, it involves sand and "water from the nile" but none were readily available in the apartment. i was told to kneel, i had to drink for being too competitive on the run that day. then, with an icy heineken poured over my head, i was dubbed...

suck me sack

it might be "suck me zac", but i'll find out officially when the newsletter comes out later. either way, i'm not exactly sure how it came about. i know the night before, we were at TheSpitfire, and i think i was making fun of my name (zachary) with a horrible chinese accent. one of the guys misheard me, and i think he heard "suck a me", and minutes of hilarity ensued from that. that's my best guess on how it came about. we do shoot ourselves in the foot, don't we?

i'd love to elaborate more, but i have to work up the nerve to call TheEweTrollop. i we were invited over for chili tonight, but i'm not exactly sure, and i do hate the phone so.

over and out.

---suck me sack

the hash booze cruise

two fridays ago, the hash group had dwindled a bit. many are away right now on their summer R&Rs, so it was down to just TheEweTrollop, TheKiwi, and me. TheEweTrollop had been trying to organize a small boat outing, so thursday, he calls me up at work and asks if i'd be interested in going sailing the next day rather than hashing. i thought it was a good idea, since i had a good time on the big boat in australia. he also invited me to dinner that night at TheKiwi's place. after work, i cleaned up and found my way to TheKiwi's. he has another younger kiwi roommate now, TheKiwiMike. TheKiwiMike was grilling some steaks, TheKiwi was making a salad, TheEweTrollop and i were supervising from a safe distance with beer in hand. the meal was good, but pretty much any free meal is good. the meat was a bit overcooked but TheKiwiMike was concerned about meat-borne diseases here in egypt. we talked, bullshat, dissed each other, drank, and then went out to ThePC. TheEweTrollop had some friends coming in and they were going to meet us there. TheKiwi and TheKiwiMike found a THIRD unknown kiwi at ThePC and struck up a conversation with him. TheEweTrollop and i took his buddies to another dive bar in town, TheSpitfire. there, TheEweTrollop caught up with his friends while i caught up with long lost full bottles of beer. i talked briefly with an egyptian teacher at the american college who noticed i was speaking a bit of arabic. i watched a few scenes from "open water 2" which i didn't take as a bad omen until i realized we were going boating the next day. far too late in the evening, we left the bar and went our separate ways to meet up the next day for the trip.

i arrived at the meeting point right on time. TheEweTrollop and TheKiwi were already there ready to get in the boat. TheKiwiMike hadn't made it as he didn't leave the bar until the bar asked him to leave around 6AM. the two kiwis even did so well as to piss off the stranger kiwi about something or other than i couldn't be bothered to care about. well, before i get too far into this story, i think TheEweTrollop documented the boat trip best in TheDeltaDrivel (the hash newsletter for the alex hash). check out that link for the rest of the story. and for more pictures, you can check out my flickr set.

ah, good times.

the benefits of networking

i have a strange time relating to people socially. one way or another, most people are going to annoy me in some fashion that my brain-box obsesses over until i'd much prefer not be in their presence. i didn't notice this trait until being on certain assignments for so long. for the first 4 years with TheGeneral, i worked primarily maintenance jobs; that is, you hop in, work 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day for 3-6 weeks, and you leave. that's it. just enough time to meet people, make some connections, get a job done. you have have just enough time to look around the area, but not so much that you are bored by the landscape.

since 2005, i've been primarily on long term installations. india from early 2005 through late 2006, 2007 was a highlight in bad management where i didn't do much, and then i've been in egypt since january 2008. it turns out, i think, that these long term assignments are slowly but methodically driving me insane. i still cringe when i think of pretty much anything related to india. i met people there that i truly grew to despise due to either willful (or not) incompetence, and general lack of understanding who knows more about what i do. i've noticed it a lot here lately as well. there are some egyptians onsite that i would consider acquaintances, colleagues, but on occasion, they go off on how i NEED to get married and have babies and get a house, which i want to do someday. the problem is, these are from guys that live AND work in egypt. i don't work in my home country with my family. several of these people are muslims who see the world differently (and uncompromisingly) different from me. **please keep in mind, i'm not saying all muslims are like this, just the ones who are driving me crazy are**. one guy wants me to get married so i can have my wife cleanthe house, have my food ready, take care of my kids when i get home so i'll have a calm mind. he doesn't much understand that i don't think i'd be happy with a wife who didn't strive for more than that. i asked him how he would like it if his wife worked and HE took care of the kids, cooked, cleaned, etc., complete role-reversal, but he really had no answer. he basically just said that's not the way it is, not the way his god tells him it should be. but i asked him wouldn't he bored, he said yes... then what about his wife? again, not much of an answer, or at least, not much of an answer a western woman would accept without throwing a few things at him.

in short, my fuse has grown shorter and shorter every day that i'm here. i know it sounds like an excuse, but sober... i have a really hard time tolerating these people. and by these people, i don't just mean the egyptians, i mean some of my colleagues, the hotel staff, the taxi drivers. just about everyone is hitting a raw nerve nowadays.

i've gone off on a bit of tangent though. where i was going with this is, what little sober sociability i had before coming here, it is atrophying, due to the people available to socialize with. then when i joined the delta HHH a little over a month ago, things changed. maybe it's that i'd stumbled into another social group completely unrelated to work, but i'm having a wee bit more fun. granted, the HHH isn't completely (or maybe even at all) sober, but it's introduced me to people that i don't have to be tipsy to not want to asphyxiate. we've been running once a week, learning about each others' past, i've been to several dinners with TheMougli (hash name), who has a similar displeasure toward the indian continent, and his wife, ThePlasticBag (hash name). i was invited on a "diving" trip (entailing nothing but trying to get to every dive bar in alex), but i totally forgot about it after a long day at work. i just got a call from TheEweTrollop (hash name) asking if i wanted to get together at TheKiwi's (hash name yet to be given) house for dinner tonight. i was thinking about going out drinking or maybe catching a movie, but that's what is cool, they go out and do things. they all kind alive near each other which helps, while i'm about a 10 minute cab drive away, but it's pumping some life into this assignment, that after almost 8 months has grown quite stagnant. TheEweTrollop also asked if i wanted to go sailing tomorrow. sailing! i'd never been sailing in my life until last year's R&R to australia, and it was a fantastic time. i thought about learning more about sailing, i'd even bought some books which are waiting for me at home, and out of nowhere, i get invited to go again, and i'm incredibly excited to do something that's still new to me. here's to hoping i don't have to work tomorrow now.

all of this "new" experience stuff can be traced back to accidental networking (that bastard device of kiss-asses looking to climb the ladder... at least, that's how i always thought of it), but this is flesh-n-blood social networking. it's not facebook, it has nothing to do with work connections, favors, benefits. maybe this is how normal people make friends. i may have forgotten how. it all started when we had a trainer here, he met TheEweTrollop and his wife, TheCallGirl (hash name) at the hotel they were staying at as well while waiting for their apartment to be ready. TheTrainer invited us all out to meet at ThePortugueseClub (ThePC), we friended, went on a few daytrips, but i never really thought anything of it. they were nice enough, but with "friends" in this field being so transitory, i figured i mightn't see them again. then i took some time off the drink and didn't visit ThePC again for a while. i went back one night, and as i've told already, imbibed, agreed to run the hash the next morning, and the rest is history. i have a new circle of friends. they've given me names of people they know on the dubai and doha hash in case i get assigned there next, their a mixed bag of pretty interesting people.

and i'm looking forward to sailing tomorrow.

another bad haircut

maybe this is why i didn't cut my hair for 15 years. bad barbers. here is me with my latest haircut and my "stern" look. i've never had to deal with it until now, but a lot of the guys i work with have to go out and find a barber on the road that can do a decent job. you can't just pop down to zeke's and have him give you the same haircut he's given you since you were 10. probably the hardest part is that, here, they don't speak english. so i asked my driver how do you say "half" because i wanted my hair half as short as it was, he told me "nos". easy enough. i go in, say hi, ask "nos?" while pulling my hair to it's length, and he nods "yes". another bad thing is that, barbers here only know one hairstyle. i'd say 99% of egyptians have curly hair like me, but almost all of them comb it straight back. they don't embrace the curl. so the barber starts by combing my hair straight back though i came in with a truly wind-swept curly-do. he parts it to the right and cuts some, he parts it to the left and cuts some, he give me a back-to-front comb over and cuts some, and i'm realizing my hair is getting a bit shorter than i wanted. i told him to stop before it got too short, so he finished up, then combed my hair STRAIGHT back, and told me he was finished. i can't figure out why when i came in with with wild curly hair that he sent me out looking like a greaser from the 60's.

i seriously think this is one of the worst haircuts i've gotten from a sober person. i mean, when i was like in 6th grade or something, TheDad decided to try to cut my hair drunk, and needless to say, it didn't turn out well. it was dubbed "the MIRL cut". it was similar to this one but more exaggerated, in that, one side was several inches longer than the other. i was also lucky enough to be left with several bald spots from inebriated slips of the clippers.

luckily i have curly hair so no one can really tell, but this is a SHITTY cut job!!! and this is my disgustipated face ("tool" reference)

in other news, i'm up to 2 kings in the bible, and there is some crazy/funny shite going on in there. i think my next post will be the fourth installment of "biblical observations". i also did my third hash yesterday but wasn't named (poor me) the normal RA was away for a few days in ethiopia, so here's to hoping for next week.

HHH (hash house harriers)

well, the rumors are true. the thursday night before last, i drunkenly and accidentally joined a running club, or more precisely, "a drinking club with a running problem". it's a bunch of rogue ex-pats that are a part of the hash house harriers (click for more info). i was talking to a welsh couple, TheGeoff and TheJanice, that TheMech and i had met at ThePortugueseClub (ThePC) a while ago. i told TheJanice that i'd taken up running every other day out of boredom and trying to get fit, and she told me that was wonderful because they had recently resurrected the local hash. i was 10-feet tall and bullet proof so i excitedly told them i'd meet them at ThePC the next day at 3:30PM for the run.

soon after, the guys i was with (plus one wife) and i decided to go check out the belly-dancing at "paradise" in agami. i'd gone several months before and had fallen in lust with a dancer named TheSabrine. excellent dancer and gorgeous. it's about a half-hour drive, but luckily one of the guys we were with had a car and didn't mind chauffeuring. we got there a little after 12AM and waited for the dancing to start. there was a girl there in street clothes that looked like TheSabrine but she was just sitting on a bench like any other customer. i'd told the wife we were with that i know a dancer named TheSabrine from before, and i thought she was very attractive. not too long after, the girl who looked like TheSabrine came over to the wife we were with, they spoke, and the wife told the girl (who was TheSabrine) that i thought she was hot. so in my embarrassment, i told her "i love you" in arabic (making her laugh was my only hope to get out of this unscathed... and it worked). she laughed, they talked, we sat and drank until the dancers came on around 1AM. at first there were two asian looking dancers that i wasn't to keen on. the rumor was that these girls were the owner's new favorites. as far as i was concerned, he could have them. i hadn't noticed, but i'm guessing around 2:00AM, TheSabrine disappeared to get ready. she came on around 2:30AM and put on a fabulous show. she tried to get me on the dance floor once but, i refused. my vast experience from strip clubs taught me it's RARE you are allowed on stage so it's almost in my genes (TheT!!!). a few more beers later, i was coerced into getting up and dancing with her. guys "make it rain" with LE 1 (1 egyptian pound notes = ~$0.18). i know it's a cheaper society, but i feel it cheapens the whole experience, though one of the guys i was with could resist doing it to me and TheSabrine. i gave her LE 200 later that night in big bills, hoping she could palm one. there's TheMoneyMidget that runs around scrambling up the small bills on the dance floor. i handed this money directly to her hoping she could show TheMoneyMidget one and keep the other for herself, though i'm not sure if we were that smooth. i was pretty hammered by the time and starting to fall asleep, so we all decided to split. i got home around 4AM, updated things on facebook telling everyone i was running the next day, and then i hit the bed hard!

the next day, i dragged myself out of bed around 1PM dreading the run. i zombie-walked around the room to my computer and checked my facebook. i had many congratulatory and pep-talking comments on my run. i'm guessing when i had updated my status on facebook the night before, i was preventing myself from handicapping my way out of running. now that i had all this positive support, i HAD to run, no matter how i felt. so... i crawled back into bed until 3:00PM, when i had beaten myself up enough that i KNEW i had to run. i threw on some clothes, grabbed my iPod and rocking bluetooth wireless iMuffs, and grabbed a cab to ThePC.

we had a pre-run beer at ThePC then were on our way to the egyptian farmland. it was maybe a 5-10 minute drive on the agricultural road toward work then we turned off into the fields, parked the cars and talked about how the run works. the night before the run, the "hares" go out and mark a trail with balls of shredded paper. if you (the followers are called the "hounds") see a ball of shredded paper, you are on the path and you yell "ON ON!" to the people behind you so they know. you run this trail until you come to three balls of paper in a triangle (since this is the delta hash club). this is a checkpoint where the path can diverge. once there you look around for the continuation of the path. this give time for the walkers to catch up to the runners (i'm a hybrid runner/walker). but beware, because the hares have laid traps. at the checkpoint there is one correct trail, and several possible false trails. so everyone spreads out, finds a trail, and starts running it. soon someone will come across TWO balls of shredded paper which denotes a false trail and they have to go back to the checkpoint to find the correct trail. i have an uncanny knack for finding false trails which means, in the end, i run/walk further than most with all the backtracking.

once the directions were given, the hares started the run. on occasion, they will intentionally take a route they know is wrong, to give the newbies an idea of what to look for in a false trail and how it goes. early on in the run we were running along a path next to a tiny irrigation ditch. the water reeds were pretty thick pushing us to jump across the ditch for about 20 yards then back on to the path. just as i was going to jump over the ditch my foot slipped INTO the ditch, covering my lower extremities in mud and, in turn, tweaking my already-bad ankle. i walked most of the rest of the way, carefully testing my ankle with short jogs here and there. after about 50-60 minutes of running around the egyptian farms like lunatics, having the field workers laugh at us, cheer us on, and offer us tea, we were back at the cars for "the circle". "the circle" is a bit like hazing. the newbies are brought into the circle and made fun of a bit, they have to sing, the have to down a more-than-likely warm and flat beer from the ceremonial mugs, jokes are told, stories about the day's run are exaggerated, regulars are given hash names if they don't already have one (one of the driver's was named TheScrewDriver and his daughter was named TheDirtyGirl), the next run is announced and then it's "ON IN"... back to the bar to socialize. this 1-hour run turned into an 8 hour event. good times!

the next day my ankles were killing me, but it was worth it. i've realized i need to strengthen my lower back because running on actual terrain as opposed to a treadmill makes my lower back ache in just a few minutes. i went again yesterday for my second run (hash #7 for the club this year), again had the back problem, but it eased up a bit. the hare who laid the course got us lost a few times. he blames the locals for burning his markers but i think he just got turned around. either way it was all good fun. that the hash update so far.

oh yeah, about TheConfederationsCup... now i'm not big on soccer, but if it's a social event i'll check it out. last sunday, USA was playing egypt and the one of the bartenders arranged for a TV for the bar so myself and a few other americans here could watch the match. as far as i know, the USA isn't really well known for their soccer team, and i HAVE seen egypt play, and i have to say they are pretty good. there were two guys (one kuwaiti and one egyptian) sitting on a couch next to us asking why we were routing for USA to which we replied that we were americans, so we were showing our pride. he explained to us that even if the USA won, it didn't mean anything because they'd lost such-and-such already, so they were out of contention so we should route for egypt. that seemed like a complete fallacy of an argument, a win is a win, so we continued routing for the US, and took great pleasure in watching him sulk when the US beat egypt 3-0. so, the next day i read that the US WAS playing for something. on the off-chance that USA scored 3 more goals that egypt and brazil beat italy by 3 goals, then we were still in... and that's what happened! i haven't YET seen TheKuwaiti to gloat a bit, but if i do see him, i will.

so, on wednesday, TheEweTrollop (hash name), formerly referred to as TheGeoff, had a going away to do for his wife, TheCallGirl (formerly known as TheJanice). she comes to visit for 5 weeks then goes back to wales for 5 weeks, then he goes to visit her for a bit. during her farewell party, the spain-USA match was on. again, everyone kind of figured spain would wipe the pitch with us since they were going for some sort of 36-game win streak record or something like that. during the game, i was getting excited to see that we were winning and got in the way of a guy sitting behind me who asked me to sit down... so i sat down in the chair next to him rather than my own seat. TheAbdullah, as i found out his name, is a professor of pharmacology at the local college. i then found out he got his bachelor's degree at TheOhioStateUniversity in the late 70's. for some reason, that made me say something along the lines of... so, around the time when i was just being birthed, you were partying like rockstar on high street in columbus, like 2 hours from my house, and now, 31 years later, halfway around the world, we cross paths?! i think my mind was blown a bit more than his was. long story short, USA beat spain, the big enchilada, 2-0, and we are moving on to the finals with brazil tomorrow. i'm actually excited for THIS game!