roller-derby and graphs

i'm proud to say, i have a friend who is trying to roller-derby. how frickin' cool is that? i'm sure you ARE ALL visiting her original site, but now you should join me in following her progression from n00b to however-far-beyond-n00b she gets. check her new site out here. now, i GOTTA go visit her... like in real life. rock on!

AND completely unrelated... i like this graph.


see more Funny Graphs

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

quickly... some cool stuff

i'm crazy sunburnt from my afternoon sailing trip yesterday. good stories to be told, but that'll be in a day or two. until then, i ran across these and thought they were pretty cool.

i SOOOO want this zombie shirt. fantastic marketing!

and this link talks about a renewable energy concept that would totally rock to see implemented. it's based on bikes being used to charge batteries which then charge electric buses. people ride bikes in europe all the time, we should start doing that in the US.

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!

my treadmill 5K

yesterday i attempted to gauge my 5K time on the hotel treadmill. first i weighed myself then i put on my "running" music which consists of some speed metal and hardcore rock (static-x, chevelle, etc). i hit the "5K" button, input my weight, and randomly chose "level 5" not really knowing the specifics of level 5. now, when i run my normal 50 minute run, i set it at 7.5. i'm not sure if that's mph or just a random computer "level" setting on the treadmill, but 7.5 is a good pace for me. once i hit start, the "5K" program ramps you up through three stages through the first two minutes until you get to your 5K pace. it started at like 6.5 then moved up to 9.6 which was a bit brisk, then all hell broke loose as it ramped up to my final pace of 12.7. my heart dropped as i noticed the control panel was moving farther away from me... i was dangerously drifting away from the "SLOW THE FUKK DOWN" button. i lunged toward the button and was lucky enough to get it down to the "level 1" setting, around 7.5 where i like it.

all was safe... or so i thought. i guess i expected too much from the internal computer of the treadmill. it teased me by letting me get into a running comfort zone then, seemingly randomly, decided to speed up to 9.6 again. i seriously almost took a header like the dude in this video. i didn't go down, but i stumbled noticeably (though luckily no one was there to notice). i had to fight with the damn thing every 4-5 minutes to get back down to my comfy 7.5 setting. when i finished, i ended up where i expected, 5K in 25 minutes, but there were some technical difficulties, so i could probably trim a few minutes off. we'll see. i'll let you in on the joke next time i try it.

will wonders never cease?

last night, around midnight, i was curled up in my blankets in my refrigerated room just the way i like it, when my phone rang. it took me a ring or two to realize what was going on, then figured it out, saw it was midnight, and answered this strange phone number. TheMom drunk dialed me. apparently, TheYoungerSister got TheMom a wee bit loopy down at the pool bar on "bananas in the bush" and some other drink i don't recall because i was half asleep. TheMom repeated how much she loved me and that she's having a good time. TheYoungerSister laughed a lot and told me that she had to dial because TheMom couldn't see the numbers. TheNephew said he was having fun and was looking forward to going swimming in the ocean soon. sounds like they are having a good time, and since i drunk dial TheMom on occasion (oh yeah, **FOREVER SINGLE**) so she can talk to my foreigner friends, i guess turnabout is fair play.

in other news, i ran 6.23 treadmill-miles yesterday in 50 minutes. it said i burnt like 745 calories, but you can never trust those things. i was really surprised how psychological i found running to be rather than physical. i mean, i wasn't running any sort of marathon-pace, but i was going along at a nice clip, and when the 50 minutes was done, i wasn't even really winded. the worst part was the boredom. i can't run without a distraction, so i have the rocking archos 605 wi-fi that TheChump got me for xmas to watch TV on while i run. i watch an episode of something or other that usually lasts about 45 minutes. when the show is over, those last 5 minutes are excruciating. not painful, but my brain just goes haywire at how completely boring running is. maybe another reason i think i need ritalin, i'm under-stimulated or something. i'm sure running out in the world has to have more stimulation, but i'm pretty damn sure it's not orders-of-magnitude, and that's what i need.

i think tomorrow, since it's the start of the weekend, i'm going to ease into the weekend and instead of doing 50 minutes, i'm going to run the treadmill-5K to get a baseline on how i might do. from my 50-minute run, i'm assuming i'll clock in at exactly 25 minutes, but that's at a trot. i might try to up the ante a bit, kick just a wee bit harder and see what happens. if it turns out i'm not a complete running retard, i'm actually kinda thinking about possibly maybe running a REAL 5K when (if ever) i get back home. there are loads of charity 5Ks aren't there? or are they 15Ks? not sure i'd want to do that, but we'll see, and hopefully, soon i'll be seeing some skinny coming my way.

the scotland post is in progress and will probably be up in a day or two. still thinking about a third blog, i think i have the format down, just need the graphics, i'm sure it'll change during it's infancy, and i'm tweaking the ZUMEL keyboard, so i might post there within a few days. i'll keep you updated. later kids.

day 6/7, these shoes are made for walkin'

day 6 and all things are go. no shakes, no "sober hangover", no nothing. the only thing different is that sober, i realize why i drank. this city is boring, this job is basically done, my hotel is... adequate. there's absolutely nothing exciting in this area that doesn't start before maybe midnight (the discos), but i have to be up for work around 6AM so that doesn't work out. so i guess i think i'm proving two points: 1) i don't have a problem, no one has to worry about me, and 2) i drink to make things more exciting. if i was in a hip/happening place with things to do, i might drink less because there WOULD be other things to do. thinking back maybe 6 years until last christmas, i can't think of a SINGLE day that i didn't have at least one alcoholic beverage. really. TheEJ noticed my voracious drinking appetite this past christmas and challenged me to a drink-free 24-hours. since then i've had several. this 7-day challenge came up somehow / sometime in edinburgh, and it's gone off without a hitch. no physiological issues, no psychiatric issues, i'm all good. i just do it for the fun. that being said, i probably won't go bawlz-to-the-wall as much. anyways, this is a prelude to my new healthy regime.

i started the non-drinking due to antibiotics, kept going for the test, and for the past week or two i've consistently jogged/walked at least 5 miles every other day. i got new shoes for this as the shoes i had were more for show than cushioning. running on a treadmill and tedious and boring but i put on an episode of "fringe" or "lost" or something on the archos (thanks chad), and time goes by a little easier. well today i went golfing with my caddy. normally he just caddies, but he's an excellent player. last week, i was awful, so he said this week i get a lesson, so he played with me. the guy is insane. he complained he was having a bad day since he hasn't had time to golf in a month,.. he shot a 4 over (his normal is 2 under). muthafucka! i spent more time on the fairways on the holes around me than on my fairways. he taught me some good tips that i'd need to practice more with. in all it was good fun, i just have a massive inferiority complex when people are better than me at something i'm trying, so even though he said i was doing OK or getting better, i felt like an ass when i screwed up and cursed to high-heaven. (walking during golfing + spending most of the time chasing errant balls = ~3.5 miles)

after golf, i grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. i made small talk in arabic which makes them happy (and also lets them know i've been around a while so don't tryto screw the white person by jacking up the fare). he asked what i do and if i was married. i told him i was a mechanical engineer and not married. he then asked me to meet his daughter for a date. she's a waitress at chili's. i politely told him i might stop by sometime. how would that work

AT CHILI'S: hey, um, anyone in here's dad drive a taxi...? yeah, yours? well hi, your dad told me to come meet you, thinks we should go on a date.

ridiculous. then when i got back to the hotel, i was walking to the hotel entrance past one of the many shops in the mall that my hotel is situated above, when a guy runs out and hands me a business card... "Men's FIRST XXL". again, muthafucka... i'm LOSING weight, and this guy gives me a business card for his s hop that specializes in XXL, XXXL, XXXXL, XXXXXL, and XXXXXXL clothing (i'm not shitting you, they write all those out on the advertisement).

back in my hotel room, i tried to distract myself from doing anything else useful to no avail. i started DLing some movies then decided i was going to walk along the corniche (the main road long the med). i put on my "exercise" shoes and grabbed a cab to sidi gaber. i don't know what sidi gaber is, but it's the closest place on the corniche to my hotel, and i knew if i told the cabbie, "corniche", he'd be confused. i popped in my iPod and started head-banging my way down the corniche all the way to caitbay castle at the west end of the bay. i then turned back and stopped off at the cecil hotel where they have a chinese restaurant on the roof. i sat outside and enjoyed a lemonade and water while waiting for my spicy tuna maki (sushi), hot and sour soup, and spicy BBQ beef. it was a good meal since i'd walked so much (the trip up and back was about 6 miles) and hadn't eaten since breakfast (it was now 6PM). i grabbed a cab from that hotel to mine (the cabbie was a bit confused by this), but he might've been confused by anything. he was OLD. and he had something wrong with him, either tourettes or OCD or parkinson's, i don't know, but the whole ride back, he was jumpin', jivin', and wailin' like a boll-weevil. sometimes while he was shimmying, he'd use the steering wheel for leverage, and as you might know, steering wheels aren't stationary, that is, they can rotate, and rotate they did on occasion making us swerve erratically into oncoming traffic in small alleys.

but, i made it home, that was my fun day. i have pictures, not very exciting but some were cute. i'll add them to this post later, but i'm tired now, so come back for the enhanced version in a day or two. later.

7-day sober, take 2

ok, several days back, i endeavored to go 7 days without drinking. i'm doing this to allay fears friends and family might have, AND it's healthy. as luck would have it, the next day, i was waiting outside the hotel for TheDriver, when a guy walked past who looked eerily familiar. i immediately thought it was a colleague i'd met almost five years ago in spain, but couldn't figure out what he would be doing here, since the only sites that i knew TheGeneral were working on were the one i'm at and the one i WAS at that is very far from here (i now know there was a small outage at an old site about 30 minutes from the hotel he was working on). apparently, he must've recognized me as well (though i had my long hair when we last worked together), but wasn't sure so he nonchalantly showed that the shirt he was wearing had TheGeneral logo on it... he said, "BigZac?", i said "TheJohn? (he shares his name with a popular fake news anchor from comedy central)", and it turns out that we were both right.

TheJohn, being scottish, likes his drink as most of us TAs do, and said that he'd see me at the bar that night to catch up, so i had one day sober and it all fell apart. i took the TheJohn on the weekly KFC run two nights ago, we caught up on where we'd been working and the like. two days ago, we had a day off, so i took him and his mechanical colleague golfing. we are absolute shite (except for the mech colleague, an american indian from oklahoma who hadn't golfed in 5 years or more, and he whooped us). it was good a time, but now his assignment is over, and today he flies out back to spain.

so now, i make my second attempt at healthiness. we'll see how it goes. i've been going to the gym fairly regularly; i do about 5 miles in 50 minutes, a leisurely pace that still works up a sweat. the gym scale says i'm at 98kg which is impossible (that's 215lb), so i need to track down a calibrated scale now. may hand is doing much better, i've updated with another picture at the bottom of this post. more updates to come. i'm still trying to tweak my keyboard to update ZUMEL. since i lost my last hard drive, i lost the specialized keyboard, so i'm rebuilding it now. hopefully, i can update there more soon. thanks to that one visitor i have who has hope i'll update it again, whomever you are.

in related, good news...

while i was on my R&R in scotland that i have yet to post pictures of, i believe it was TheEJ and i got into a conversation on my drinking and how she might be a bit worried about me. i told her i've had more drink-free days since christmas when we talked about it, than in the past loads of years. she then emphasized "day" as in single, which it was. i've not gone two days without a drink in ages, so i told her probably out of drunken bravado, "i could do a week, easy". she recently asked me when i was going to start and i was non-committal as i usually am. i don't have much direction in life, which some find nerve-racking. i just kinda go with the flow, and really make decisions unless i stumble into them or am pushed; thus, here i am.

since i'm on antibiotics, i shouldn't drink to increase their effectiveness. i didn't drink yesterday, i ran 5 miles again, i ate sensible meals all day, and now i'm on today, day 2 of no drinking with no adverse effects (aside from a festering right hand, but that isn't drink related). ebola or bot flies or something pushed me to do my one-week trial run, so now i'm doing it. i'll let you know if i get the DTs, see polka-dotted elephants or spontaneously combust (well, you might have to subscribe the the egyptian papers to hear about that). i'm doing this to allay my friends' concerns, and MAYBE try to be a wee bit healthier. sucks because we are going out for a work dinner to see TheSiteLead off (yeah, I'M being forced into the position, and i'm pissed), and i get along best with most of my colleagues with a few drinks in. we'll see how i do. later kids.

P.S. TheSiteManager just walked in with my company laptop. after TWO MONTHS in limbo with the goofy IT guys, i have a brand-spankin'-new hard drive, and my old encrypted one with all the crap on it i want that i can't get to. AWESOME!!! i can feel my OCD trembling at the base of my cerebral cortex, just dying to boot it up and get things back the way they were. that'll be weeks of work, i'm sure.

R&R alpha - berlin/dresden (day 8/9) - yalla bina

it's now the 8th of october. we've fairly unpickled ourselves from oktoberfest. TheTav had to shoot off home (he had facebook dates to keep), and for some security reason that i'm sure he made up, he couldn't go to prague (our next stop), with us because he hadn't told him mommy, i mean, his company first (if you're reading this TheTav, i'm just fukking with ya). man, there were a lot of parentheses used there. anyways, TheWayne and i did a secondary tour around berlin on our way to the main train station to get tickets for prague. we stopped at kaiser wilhelm church which was strangely found hidden amongst modern buildings in the downtown area. it was one of the most gaudy looking churches i've ever seen in my life and for some reason, i can't find photos of it. i KNOW i took some, maybe they were so horrid, they deleted themselves. lots of gold and brass and blood-red velvet; silver horns and angels floating around the must-and-dust filled air. we got our tickets, and moved on to the reichstag which is the building that houses the german parliament known as the bundestag, not to be confused with the german football (soccer) league, bundesliga. this was a convenient location as it was just about a half mile from the hauptbahnhof station (which i just found out is the largest crossing station in europe, fancy!). we wanted to see the dome which is open to the public, but it turns out that it was closed due to maintenance, so we just hung out on in front of the building watching all the italian high-school kids flirt with each other and bound around on their big german field-trip.

we moved on to check point charlie again just in case we missed anything. it was pretty much the same as it has been since they tore down the wall in '89. we found the last kremlin flag hanging on the exterior of a building which we found pretty impressive until we read that it was a REPLICA of the last kremlin flag. now how the hell does that work? anyways, after seeing that not much had changed since the day before, we moved on to oranienbergerstraße (oranienberger street). berlin has oranienstraße and oranienbergerstraße. i think the night before we were looking for one and found the other. after much walking because TheWayne loves to walk (damn triathlete and fitness), we stopped at a mexican cantina and had a few beers with dinner. after that, we hopped over the bar next door which had shisha, a common egyptian pastime that TheWayne had never tried. after the shisha, TheWayne and i caught the train back to the hotel where we picked up our bags and headed out to catch the DB train at the hauptbahnhof station on our way to prague. while waiting for the train we bought a few beers and some sushi for the ride. we also tried to buy some cards to have something to do on the trip, but they were all in german and in plastic. we bought what we thought was a poker deck, but it turned out to be a pinochle deck. that was no use to us, so we without entertainment besides ourselves on our way to prague. here i've posted a picture of a peculiar bike. it seems germany has "call-a-bike"s. from what i can tell, you can call the number, give them a credit card number and the number on the bike, and they remotely unlock the bike for you to use. i'm guessing once you lock it up again (at another DB bike station which are located around the city), they charge you for the time and deduct a deposit on the bike. nifty!

oh yeah, we had like a 6-hour layover in dresden, germany, i believe from like 11:30PM to 5:30AM. that's why this post is called "yalla bina" which is arabic for "let's go!". i taught this to TheWayne early on in the trip, and he took to it well. if we were heading out to go somewhere, one of the other of us was more than likely to say it. this late evening/early morning would end up me hating having taught him this word. not in that he overly used it, but that's all i could think of as my aching feet followed TheWayne around dresden in the death of night. we locked our bags in one of the train lockers and set off around 11:30PM. i kinda figured we'd just sleep that 6 hours, but TheWayne had other plans. he wanted to walk around and see dresden by night. we walked (oh yes, this word WILL be used quite frequently in this section) around for a while until we stumbled upon a bar we found open called capetown's (sorry the link is all german). it was in a little square with a few other bars around, but there seemed to be more people here. we stepped in, and the waitstaff all wore white shirts and ties and had these cool portable scanners that at the time i thought were really neat, but i can't think what they were used for now (this is where TheWayne comes in in the comments). i had my first diesel (half lager, half cider, and a bit of black currant cordial). maybe TheWayne and The Tav built it up a bit too much as i wasn't as impressed with it as i'd hoped to be, but it WAS alcohol and it WAS in front of me. i think they were closing not too long after we'd arrived so we didn't stay there long. we walked some more, and then walked a little more and then came upon another bar still open called ayer's rock (this link brought to you in english). here we sat outside, drank, and waxed philosophical. we got into deep conversations about love, betrayal, suicide, and more. the bathroom was inside which by this time we were visiting frequently (yet separately) due to libation overload. just outside the bathroom, there was one of those tourist boxes with dozens of advertising slips for this boat ride or that bike tour or the other museum. at that time in the night, drunk, tired, sore feet, i thought it would be HILARIOUS to collect all of them and give them to TheWayne on the train, so i stacked them all up and put them in my back pocket. around 3AM, that bar closed and we were off to... you guessed it, walk some more. now NOTHING was open. nothing around but just streetlights and two americans wandering aimlessly around a formerly fire-bombed city. we were walking down to towards the river when we saw these strange blue cubes seeming to float on the hillside. we walked up to them to find they were only blue-lit lucite planted on the hill. we couldn't find an actual use or memorial plaque explaining their meaning. we then walked across the elbe river where TheWayne had a fleeting thought of jumping into it for shites and giggles. we walked along the river and were JUST about to board a luxury boat that was docked when a taxi came along the river road and dropped off it's fare just there. what are the odds?! by this time, i'm hobbling and exhausted, and the time is coming up so we decide to walk back to the train station. we got there about 45 minutes before our train arrived, so we each grabbed a bench in the station and took a nap. i dozed off and on watching the cinnabon lady open her stand as the station got progressively busier. 45 minutes later and we were on the train to prague, only about 2 hours away by train. we tried to catch a bit of sleep. i had a hard time getting comfortable as something was pinching me in the back. i pulled out the stack of adverts i'd taken from ayer's rock, showed them to TheWayne and explained my devious plan. it wasn't so funny at this time in the morning...

btw, new poll on the left.

me waiting at the hauptbahnhof station for our trip to prague via dresden.

TheWayne doing his best myspace pose, and me with my wasabi peas.

my new motto/tattoo

i'm not big on quote tattoos unless they are hot tramp stamps like this. still, i think i've found my next tattoo. it's a toss-up. one is from a korn song, "divine", i heard last night while working out, and the other is from kurt vonnegut's timequake. of course, i'm only joking about the korn song, but it definitely gets you through to the second wind on the stationary bike. i'm really thinking about the vonnegut quote though. i highly suggest the book. his sense of humor is fantastic. it's a great quote expressing that the past needs to be placed exactly there, in the past. it's a "pick your self up by the bootstraps and move on" inspiration. now, i just need an inspirational font.

• "fuck you! i'm fed up with you! i'm not as good as you? fuck you, i'm better than you!" - korn, "divine"


• "You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do." - kurt vonnegut, timequake

which do you prefer?

also, for those interested, i've updated my new work location, living quarters, my weight (man, i took a hit over the holidays, but i'm back to the gym), my countdown clock, and even managed a new ZUMEL post. look around the page for those magical updates.

bullets

man, so much to talk about. this morning when we got to site, we heard rumor that our customer laid of some 25 or so people yesterday and didn't pay them, so today, no one is working. there are maybe 5-10 people available out of several hundred.

• i got a call from TheSiteLead to book a flight today to doha, qatar to pick up some balance weights (we have a slight vibration problem onsite). he gave me the name of the guy i was to contact there, and i had to tell him i'd rather not go. he's someone i know about who i'd rather not meet... right now.


• i think i forgot to tell you guys that i FINALLY paid off my school loans last month. we were all going to have a celebration, bitches for me, but then the jules thing shite the bed, and the party was moved to the background. my school cost total about $125k. when i consolidated in '03 or '04, i had about $25k i owed still. i buy some toys, but until that was done, i considered myself broke because i was paying as much as possible as often as possible to get out from under that mountain of debt. i was going to be debt-free up until i made a significant jewelry purchase in april that is no longer necessary. i'm paying that off for now, not sure what to do with it after, so about one more year then i'm out of debt again.


• i really despise debt. i know no one likes it, but i just feel so oppressed by it at times (and though i've had significant debt from school and such, i've never really been unable to pay off my payments). i bought both my trucks cash (the first one was $2k, my most recent was about $10k). i don't like payments. i never over-extend my credit card, i use it to get hotel points on purchases and usually pay it off within a few days of the purchase. i don't own a house, but that is going to have to change soon. i'm growing up, and it's hard to bring a girl back to a hotel and have her think you respectable. maybe i'll throw myself a little party tonight for my school loan payment completion.


• i'm tired.


• i'm lonely.


• my bed is empty, and i've lost my break-up poem book. good thing i transcribed most of them before i lost it, but still, there are things in there i might not want some people to see.


• people tell me it gets easier every day, but if it does, that means how i feel about her has changed, and i don't want that. ignorance would've been bliss in this case, damn my 6th sense.


• i'm going to munich for oktoberfest 2 weeks from today with an former colleague. i heard word today that his roommate in training and friend of mine might try to meet us over there as well. that would SO rock. now i just need to get motivated to find a flight, and hopefully one of them is on the accommodations. once i got on that R&R, that'll be almost one whole month jules and i won't see each other. i'm gone from 30-sept through about 15-oct, and i think she leaves 15 or 16-oct through the end of the month to see a friend in poland. damn separating, er, separate R&Rs. the last one in australia was so fun.


• i might go the gym tonight, get toned up for the deutsch beergirls, see if i've lost any more weight.

that's enough for now, it's lunch time, and i need to think about other things.

my ramadan beard

what do you think of it? actually i started growing it when i got lazy from the shite that's fallen all about me, but when some of the muslims onsite asked about it, i told them i was converting to islam for the month of ramadan. they laughed, probably because they barely know a lick of english, but it's my joke now.

i woke up in a bad mood this morning, and it only got worse. in the morning we stop at the petrol station to get some sandwiches for lunch, drinks, and there's an HSBC ATM there. the first time i used it, i was scared. the card inserter/ejector device is slow as bawlz, like old-lady-crossing-the-street-in-manhattan slow and unsteady. i really was surprised to get my card back. since then, i've gotten used to it. today, AS SOON as i put my card in the slot, a screen came up apologizing for being out of order, so i hit cancel, and it wouldn't give me my TheGeneral CORPORATE card back!!! i hit cancel and error numerous times to no avail so i had my driver call the 24-hour number on the machine. they said that someone will come look at the machine, collect the card, and they'd be back at the HSBC office near my house at noon. i had to come before 1:30PM though because the bank closes then the ENTIRE month of ramadan, and today was day numero uno. the good thing about this was i got to leave work early to get it. i left at 11:00AM, got the the bank around 12:15PM, and waited until 1:00PM when the guy finally arrived with "the box". we followed him to the "ATM department-restricted access" door with the fancy keypad (i saw the code, i'm making a dash for the cash). i gave them my passport and aobut 15 minutes later they came out with my card. i'm so happy. then i offered the driver a meal at KFC next door. i ordered a wrap for lunch and a sandwich for snack/dinner. after about 15 minutes waiting around, the guy comes out and says they don't have sandwiches today. seriously, WTF took 15 minutes to figure that out? so i left in a huff and came home. i'm gonna hop on my bike now and do some exercising/shopping.

NOTE: btw, i uploaded that picture with my eye-fi card, how frickin' cool is that? that means, i took the photo, the eye-fi card encoded my GPS location using local router triangulation to the pic, and automatically uploaded it to my flickr account without any interference from me. if you click on the pic, and at the right, you see "taken in al maadi, al qahirah", click on the map link. i didn't have to put it on the map, it did it all by it's lonesome, and that is my exact building. really... i think that is so cool

the long road home

the drive home from site is about an hour long. not awful, but it will get relatively worse once we start working 12+ hours a day (i'm working 12 today). once we come off the main ring road in maadi, that's when you see how poor the city planner was. i've highlighted my route from the ring road to my house in these two pictures. why can't we just turn left sometimes, but the planner decided that one way bridges and limited overpasses would be a REALLY GOOD IDEA. from getting off ring road to my house takes about 15 minutes. i estimate that if the roads were designed as they are now but with appropriately placed overpasses and exits, that trip would be more like 5 minutes. now that doesn't sound like a lot, only saving 10 minutes, but that's an hour over a week. over a year, that's more than two days i could save to spent on fun things like getting lost in maadi on my bike.



like last night, i ventured out to find "volume 1", a bookstore that i'd heard about from a german i ended up talking to at a local bar. he had an english-arabic grammar book, written entirely in english phonetics, that he suggested. i looked at google earth and mapped my route. going there was cake, no problem. it's a route that kinda filters down to where you can only go one of a few places in that direction. coming back on the other hand... jeez. give me a map, and i'm golden, i can cross-reference, no problems. i memorized the route there, but coming back, like i said, i'm going against the filtered way so from point 'B', going toward home, the roads fan out almost infinitely. if you don't see where this is going, i got horribly lost. all the roads in maadi look the same and there isn't much of a grid, or actually, there are kind of two grids offset by about 30°. so, if you start on the first grid, you can pretty much work your way to where you need to be, but if you turn onto the other grid, then you're fukked, at least, i was. again, the city planner, WTF?! in maadi, there's a section that goes street 13, 14, 15, 201. 201??!! yeah, that doesn't help when you're lost. it's not like street 15 is 70 streets away from my house, nor is street 201 116 streets away. there is no rhyme or reason to how they are named.

i was trapped in the area pictured below (i started at the circle in the middle) for about 30 minutes . maybe you can see my issue. every time i turned, i'd go a block or two before running into street 206 or 213. it was really disheartening like i was stuck in a bad dream. after about 30 minutes trying to do it myself, i caved and asked one of the many army men on the streets where street 85 was. he told me it was way behind me, which, though i didn't know exactly where i was, i KNEW it was somewhere in front of me. then i asked for grand mall which is kinda close to my place. then he pointed in front of me and told me in arabic i didn't understand to take a million-and-five turns to get there. i went that general direction, saw something that looked familiar (though not the mall), thought i was saved, and found myself soon asking another cop for street 85. he knew where it was and in 5 minutes i was home. jules is proud of how i'm venturing out and trying to learn maadi. i found two new restaurants only 3 blocks from our house buried on a quiet suburban street. found another cafe on street 213, but where on street 213, i can't say because, you guessed it, i was lost when i found it. i think i can get back there.


i won't get home until around 8PM tonight, so probably no bike riding tonight, but tomorrow, i think i'll print out a small map of maadi, grab my GPS and ride. see what i find, and then use technology to get home.

there should be a law...

against skinny people in a gym. in particular, skinny people who buy a panini sandwich from the "in-store" cafe and then have them heat it up, spreading it's cured-meat-and-melted-cheesy-goodness smell over to my elliptical machine. WTF?! i was hungry already when i went to the gym, but this guy almost made me homicidal. i have a stationary bike at home i could ride for 30 minutes, but going to the gym removes the element of "boredom temptation", you know, "eh, i'm bored, and it's more fun to grab a sandwich and a beer instead of riding that damn bike!". yeah, so the one place i thought was safe has now been defiled. it's going to take a lot of therapy, but i know i'll have to go to the gym again in another day or two.

in other news, i'm almost done writing the last installment of my australian holiday overview. i had some really witty to write about last night as i walked in the door from the accursed gym, but i've forgotten it now, so i just needed to bitch about waif-boy, and let you know, i've not forgotten how much you love my pictures.

whirlwind holiday

man alive, it seems like i haven't actually had to work in ages. i got back from my R&R on 16-april and worked the 1/2 day on the 17th. the 18th and 19th i was at a resort in hurghada, egypt. i got back and worked the 19th through the 23rd. another 1/2 day on thursday, then that weekend (this past weekend, that is) was something like memorial day AND the coptic christian easter, so we had off, friday through monday. coming back to work today was tough, i'm telling you. i should've planned better to go somewhere. instead, all weekend we just lounged by the pool, played golf yesterday (man, i suck), did even worse at darts. the apartment is a bit of a mess and jules hasn't had a chance to unpack from her R&R in turkey. tonight, we are shopping for some things we are going to need since we have guests coming on the 6th (TheJay and TheJay'sWife), and on the 7th, TheMom. then we clean the house, exercise, jules will unpack, figure something out for dinner, and hopefully get to bed early. you'd think that having a few days off would give one time to rejuvenate, but we just end up partying more thank usual. now, we really need to develop a REAL way to relax and catch up on some sleep. maybe we need the flu. here are some recent pix i've taken to share with you.

the resort we stayed at in hurghada called "desert rose"

"desert rose" pool at night from my balcony

my new bling. YUP! that's a solid silver ring with it's periodic chart of the elements info on it. i'm just too damn cool nerdy.

R.I.P. - my egyptian bike

jules and i bought bikes a couple weeks ago to bike to the gym and the market and whatnot. jules' bike is pretty nice. mine, on the other hand, is a piece of shite. since day 1, i've had nothing but problems with it. it was wrapped in bubble-wrap when i first bought it, and i didn't really check it out. definitely, "buyer beware" here. it had a slight rub on the back tire, but i thought it was from the plastic. i got it home and found out it rubbed on the brake pad... no big deal, more annoying than anything. that night, jules and i were biking to the gym and about 4 minutes into the trip, my back tire basically melted. upon further examination, the tire was bent, and it finally reached it's maximum stress level and collapsed. people were stopping and asking if a car had hit me and such. they were nice. jules rode up the road to find a bike shop. i gave up and decided just to chain it to a tree and have my driver pick it up the next day. we picked it up the next day, but being sunday, the bike shop was closed. the next day we took it back and asked the owner to fix the tire. he kept saying i was hit by a car or i rode it down stairs or something. i kept telling him, if it was truly my fault, i seriously don't think i'd make the 2+ hour round-trip to downtown cairo at rush hour to save a few bucks. he finally decided he would fix it, and i watched as he did. he had to tighten EVERY spoke and screw on the bike. i'm surprised it didn't fall apart before the tire pooped out. after about an hour, and a trial run on the busy cairo streets, we were gone with what i thought was a good bike. later that night, i pumped up the tires getting it ready for the gym trip the next day. after work, i got ready for the gym, grabbed the bike and... the front tire was flat. WTF?! i had to walk to the gym again.

well, tuesday night i decided to give the bike one more chance. i pumped up the front tire, and let it sit for two days. thursday, we got off work early, and i had to go to the market, i checked the tires, and to my surprise, they were still full, GREAT! i hopped on my bike and started riding down the street. i forgot to take the keys out of the bike lock, so somewhere along the ride the keys fell out of the lock. a little further down the road, the chain popped off the cogs. i turned the bike upside down and tried to get the chain back on. everytime i did and tested it by turning the pedals, it would pop off again. i was halfway between home and the store, and i didn't feel like back-tracking or lugging around a disabled bike, so i left it's existence to fate. i righted the bike, placed it up against a fence on the side of the street, and walked away to do my shopping. about 45 minutes and arms full of groceries later, i walked past the spot where my bike used to be.

i hate that i wasted just shy of $100 on a shite bike, but seeing that someone had taken my bike, i felt like a weight had been lifted. i hope whoever ganked my bike is having better luck than i did. to you sir, thank you.

happy easter to all the churchly folks

i didn't even realize it was easter until i saw all the easter vids on myspace and the easter messages on facebook. is that bad? i just started a book today, "the complete idiot's guide to world religions", and i'm dragging myself through a couple chapters of the bible every couple weeks. oh, the joy of learning.

anyways, i just popped in to say, last night i weighed in at the gym, and i've lost 16.3 pounds since i've started recorded which just over a month ago. jules and i decided i was allowed to have a "gift" or a "break from my diet" for one meal once i'd lost 15 pounds, because i'm ALL about the positive reinforcement. i don't even like ice cream that much, but walking past the baskin robbins is tempting just because i know i CAN'T have it. so tonight, i get to have a 1/4 pounder with cheese meal from mcdonald's DELIVERED. i'm so excited. now THAT is bad, being excited to get to have a cheeseburger that isn't even really good, and some greasy fries (i won't eat all of them). i don't get to skip the gym since there's no NASCAR race on today, so gym, mcdonald's, some billiards, and bed. i'm getting a migraine (i get tunnel vision and after-images more than intense pain), so i need to run, take some headache meds quick.