well, the tickets are booked

i booked my tickets to take my back-to-back R&Rs. sadly, they are paper tickets, and TheGeneral thinks jordan is as unsafe as egypt so i need special authorization which was given today. now i just hope they can ship the tickets in time. i'm leaving egypt just before noon on the 12th on my way to aqaba, jordan for a few days. i might think about possibly taking scuba lessons, i have a week to waste. i'm going to go to petra for at least one day, maybe more. i've heard i have to check out wadi rum, so i'm just taking any and all suggestions.

on the 20th, i fly to malaga, spain to visit TheSwedishChefDave, an old buddy i worked with in turkmenistan. i'm a wee bit concerned i might either lose my bags or miss my final connection in frankfurt, but we'll see how it goes. i'm going to spend 4-5 days there, then try to hop down to barcelona to see another work buddy i met in italy a few years back. he might be getting together with some other americans for thanksgiving, and i'll see if i can barge my way in.

i haven't booked the ticket yet due to being crazy busy packing and such, but i plan to fly from barcelona to the states on the 28th, thus fulfilling my 330 days out of country, cementing my one year on this second assignment in egypt, and getting me home with not a lot of time to do all the american things i want to do (mostly visit friends, and have some 'merican food). i'll try to update while i'm on the road, i used to be better, but now that i'm excited about heading home, i think it will be far easier. i still have to post the taxi grand prix that hash held a few weeks ago. good times. hope to see as many of you as i can in less than three weeks. back to packing my checked bag, and packing my shipments home. here's to hoping that shipping with fedex is less of a nightmare than intermove egypt was from the last job.

R&R alpha - (day 14/15) - the end is nigh; ney... the end is here

it's october 14th... tomorrow, TheWayne and i would head our separate ways after an awesome time in germany and the czech republic. but it's not QUITE over yet. we woke up to try to hit "mike's bikes" for a bike tour of munich. it was rainy, and we were a bit late, so we missed the tour. as per usual, we walked a lot but my blisters were doing better now, or my brain had just rewired the "agonizing foot pain" nerves to go to my "let's just get drunk" drive. all was better. we walked to the english garden which is a very nice area of munich. relaxed, greenery, beer, food. speaking of beer, we stopped at the chinese tower in the garden for a sausage and some beer. my facebook profile picture was taken from said been near said tower in said garden (man, that pic is a year old? gotta find a new one i guess). after a nice buzz was packed one, we made out way back towards town. we walked around marienplatz center for a bit. TheWayne was looking for some soccer jersey of some sort. i walked around the store for a brief bit but soon got bored, so i went outside to one of the outdoor restaurants in marienplatz and ordered a beer and some potato salad. normally, i wouldn't remark about potato salad, but i do have to say, this was the best potato salad i'd ever had in my LIFE. fantastic! and brilliant me, i forget the name of the place, and i forget the name of the sports store TheWayne was looking in, but if i could find THAT sports store, i could find this restaurant. TheWayne finished his perusing, so we headed off to near nymphenberg. there is a cool lake we walked around for no apparent reason. there must've been a field trip or something as there were hundreds of french kids running around being all... french. a few beers more, then we made our way back to the hotel and cleaned up for dinner. we went out and ate at the hofbraü haus. it is a famous brewery in germany, and the restaurant was awesome! it was just like the hofbraü haus beer tent at oktoberfest but with more room to move. they even had the brass band playing on occasion! i had a great steak, my first white sausage... a generally awesome meal in a cool environment. TheWayne and i chatted up TheAnnabelle (or was it TheAnastasia)... i don't recall. she was our waitress and very friendly. we had a good time entertaining each other. after dinner, we walked around looking for a place to grab a few beers, but were very unlucky this day. we ended up grabbing a taxi home since (we thought) we'd wandered quite a ways. funnily enough, the taxi driver was spanish, and i was drunk enough to think i could remember enough to speak it. i think he was amused by my attempt... hey, at least he didn't drop us in the middle of nowhere. it ended up we were only maybe 6-7 blocks from where we lived, but i take no responsibility for this navigational error. it is widely known that i have no sense of direction.

we woke up the next day with a heavy heart. it had been a great 15 days and now it was back to real life. TheWayne was back to jersey and his IronMan training, i was back to cairo to close out the job there and move on to alexandria. we grabbed a quick breakfast, packed and hopped on the train to the airport. we partook in goodbye beers, then TheWayne bid me adieu with a tear in his eye. i, myself, had to turn away... and order another beer. looking back, i'm kicking myself for not going this year. if TheWayne is up for it (and anyone else), next year, i think we gotta go again. so there it is... R&R alpha, documented on the blogosphere, completed within 1 day of it's one year anniversary. talk about cutting it close. as a friend recently told me... "for god's sake, finish the blog... you have to let go of the past to allow new experiences into your life.", but one thing before i do that...

take a walk with me down memory lane (soft lawrence welk in the background, bubbles in the foreground, soft filter on the camera...)
TheWayne, throwin' one back

Mmmmm. half-meter sausage

Escalators are like moving chairs when you're drunk

TheTav and TheWayne still sleeping in Berlin

TheTav being a drunk, passed out punk... and TheWayne making sure there is photographic evidence of it!!!

TheWayne at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin

me and one of the lines denoting where the berlin wall used to run

TheTav, TheJen, and TheWayne

Da Boys!

Saw this while waiting to leave germany. REALLY?! "meat wagon" is " car rental" in german? AWESOME!

Havin'a good time at the Hippodrom!!!

Until next time...

R&R alpha - (day 12/13) - things are getting blurry

12-october-2008 after having passed out around 5AM, we stirred a bit around 9AM, did some basic diagnostic tests, and realized we were still in non-functioning states. we tried again around 3:30PM with better results; that is, this time we made it out of our respective beds and managed to clean ourselves up. as i've stated before, TheWayne is a bit of a wandered, and that was the plan for the day. we knew a few places we wanted to check out for a drink or dinner, but if we didn't make it, so be it. after a bit of walking, we ended up at a place called "atmosphere". we grabbed dinner which included ONE ENTIRE POUND of potatoes. that's a LOT of fries. if i do recall, it was a decent place with funny drinking signs on the walls. after the grub, we wandered some more, and ended up at some sort of hipster bar called "kvarna praha" or something. baby blue walls, low lighting, and ABSINTHE!!! we grabbed a table where TheWayne ordered something sensible and i ordered an absinthe with a pepsi chaser. i've had absinthe before in india, and it tastes pretty foul. it's a strong licorice-like flavor, but worse, but hey, i'm all for legal tripping. it didn't work in india, i think we drank it too fast and just got drunk. this time i only had a small one, and i took it slow. again, funny faces were made, there were no hallucinations, but my face got flushed and i felt light for some reason. sadly, after this, again my memory fails me a bit. i think we went to a place called "musketeer", and maybe another place called "coyote"? my notes say something about arna beer being double trouble. i wish i could help you guys understand that, but that's what TheWayne is for. we must've had a good time, because i documented that, we again crashed out around 5AM.

13-october-2008 i think our livers were starting to fail. not really, but if they were, i wouldn't've been surprised. we dragged ourselves out of bed at 9AM to get cleaned up and checkout of the hostel around 10AM to get to the train station to make our way back to munich. we caught the train with no bother, and met two american girls who were backpacking around. they'd been touring some beer factories the day before and were now headed back to munich as well. we were running a bit late, and saw that our connecting train was already in the station as we pulled in. we barreled out of the train leaving the girls behind (they were going to wait and catch a later connection instead of hurrying with their big packs). it was short run, but i had a big suitcase so it wasn't ideal, but we did make it to the train with a bit of time to spare. we were surprised to see the girls decided to make the run as well and caught the train. TheWayne had found a small hotel barely a stone's throw away from the entrance to oktoberfest. we booked in, dropped our stuff off, and then made our way to the Augustiner for dinner. nothing much more in my notes. the end of the trip was nigh, and we may have been slowing down a bit, or the brain cells had been irreparably damaged. two more days and we'd be leaving germany and oktoberfest for good, and this, the longest story ever blogged, can be finished.

a roundabout story

here you find another "cowbirds in love" comic, though i don't find this one extremely funny. the reason i post it is the story that goes with it from the author. click on the picture to go to the page and read his story the frame.

when i read that story i had a bit of a flashback, and found i was laughing at myself. when TheMom had her first heart attack, us kids were kinda stuck fending for ourselves a bit. granted i was either a sophomore or junior in high school, there were some things we just didn't do... like grocery shopping. i can still picture it vividly, going to the kroger's with TheYoungerSister and TheGirlfriend(AtTheTime). we grabbed the buggy and split up going around the store getting what was on our little piece of the list. my job was to get lunchmeat for the house. i never paid attention to when TheMom bought lunchmeat, but i figured i was smart enough, i could figure it out. i took a number and waited in line, and soon it was my time to order. i told the lady i would like some bologna. she asked "which kind" to which i just pointed to one, and then "how much?"... **crickets** for some reason, i didn't think about how much, and i couldn't recall how much TheMom got at one time, so after a panicked few seconds, i said "5 pounds, please". the lady looked at my a bit strangely, and asked if i was sure. i told her "yes, it's for the week," and she went to it. i was kinda not really paying attention as she cut it, until TheGirlfriend(AtTheTime) rounded the corner, eyes wide, seeing the massive tower of bologna that the lady was stacking up on the counter. it was maybe 12" tall (though, if you can't tell, i wasn't the greatest at scale back then). TheGirlfriend(AtTheTime) ran down the aisle, chuckling the whole way trying to get the lady's attention to tell her that was enough meat. i may have imagined it, but i think TheGirlfriend(AtTheTime) and the lunchmeat lady's eyes met, and together they silently thought... "DUMB BOYS!"

meat is murder

i have a question to my vegetarian friends... and on that note, i have no vegetarian friends, so could you pass this link on to them so i could get their opinion. from this article it seems we may be only 10 years away from test-tube meat. that is meat that you would buy, cook and eat, that was grown in a laboratory rather than fed on a farm and slaughtered. this meat would be able to be adjusted to be healthier, have more of the good fats and less of the bad fats, and would decrease the need for grazing land and in the worst case, buildings cramped full of animals solely for business.

i saw this a report on this on CNNi before i saw the article. studies show that livestock produce nearly 18% of the greenhouse gases that might be affecting our climate. the entire fossil fuel industry (cars, power plants, etc) only produce 13%. that's right! cow farts are doing more damage to our environment than that gas-guzzling SUV you have. if we can culture healthier meat in the lab, we'd significantly reduce greenhouse emissions on a level not even fathomable by environmentalists trying to fight fossil fuel emissions.

so, the question is: vegetarians... would you begin eating meat? would you eat THIS meat? it's no longer "meat is murder"; it never had a face, as is the reasoning for some, AND it would be better for the environment to have people eat more lab-meat, thus making it more cost-effective. if not, what excuse would you have not to? dietitians typically don't say to completely remove red meat, but to limit it to like one serving a week, and as far as i know, there are no health risks associated with chicken at all (we're not talking salmonella here, though that would be significantly decreased since chicken factories that help spread that would be eliminated). would you eat lab-chicken? i'm just curious.

i would. i don't see a problem with it at all. healthier, better for the environment. seems to be pretty much a win-win as long as the cost isn't too much.

my fear

i want to buy a house. for some reason, i want to buy a house so bad. i think it would be really cool, just the idea of having a house, a place i go back to that is mine. i don't have much to furnish it with (2 hammocks, flat-screen TV, stereo, XBOX360, a load of books, and the latest gadgets i've acquired on the internet), but i think that would be cool, too. i think minimal would work for me.

still, i just can't commit. hell, i can't even commit to looking! i doubt my ability to make a good investment. i know one of my weaknesses is that i'm a consumer. i do my very best to stimulate this economy as much as possible, very often to my financial detriment. i like money, and i want money for security purposes, but i can't be bothered to try really hard to get it. that's kinda why i relate to this comic. buying a house would be awesome and having parties and bbqs and getting together for races would be the bomb, but having to go through the process of combing through the fine print of a lease agreement because i might screwed on legalese... i just can't fathom it.

peter pan... out.

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.

scotland R&R - edinburgh (mostly in pictures)

april 10th, i landed in edinburgh airport for a much needed 12-day vacation. i was extremely lucky in that i had several friends who were able to meet me there as well. TheEJ was able to come over for a few days, TheJay made it for the weekend, probably the smartest female i know, friend-from college, and former roommate, TheJulie came over the visit her husband, TheBill, while he's working at the university there. it was definitely a motley crew, but it turned out to be an absolute blast as expected.

i got to edinburgh late morning, and TheEJ made it there towards the late afternoon. by the time she'd arrived i'd walked a good part of the area around the hotel near the bruntsfield fields, down through the old town near the castle, and on to princes street in the new town. she'd already been to edinburgh when she was abroad in college, so she wasn't as in awe as i was about the tall and pretty cool spires and cathedrals (that's not to say she wasn't awed, just maybe a bit less so than my first experience with them). while in scotland, i, of course, had to try haggis. for some reason, i had a picture in my head that haggis was this slimy grayish organ filled with animal leftovers that every one the world except for scots thought was nasty. it turns out, haggis is fan-FUKKING-tastic. really, i need to find a hookup in america when i get back. it's not at all what i thought it was. it turns out that it's served more like hamburger. it's ground up and served loose like that or made into meatballs, in stirling, TheJulie, TheBill and i even had haggis lasagna. i find haggis to taste like ground beef with a very black-peppery seasoning to it. i think everyone should try it once, though SOME have told me they find it to have an unpleasant aftertaste, i didn't find this to be the case.

in short, edinburgh was a nice town. the weather was good, a bit brisk. i found a few pubs that were quite nice. my usual was suggesting that we ruminate at a pub while we figured out where to go next. for some reason, i don't seem to have any pictures of edinburgh castle. i'm wondering if i didn't have my camera that day. i'm sure TheJay, TheJulie, TheBill or TheEJ have some i could steal at a later date. TheEJ and i went to a cool place called camera obscura. it was kinda like smaller version of COSI with a big camera obscura on top (those camera obscuras are different links). one night, TheEJ and i ran into an old irish friend of hers and his brother after a celtic (soccer) loss. that was an experience. her friend's brother introduced himself to me on the order of maybr 15 times (no exaggeration, and funnily enough, it turned out to be such a joke that i can't recall his name now). he was plastered having been drinking all day to drown his sorrows over the loss. TheEJ goaded him into wearing his celtic scarf on the outside of his jacket and not to be a fair-weather fan. then his friends came in and ragged on him for still showing his colors. i think i ended up drinking ciders and then jack daniels? it was all very confusing. TheEJ found a pizza place that was open on the way home so we popped in there for some greasy nosh. we got two pizzas but only ate the equivalent of one. i took the remaining frankenstein pizza back to the hotel where it resided on the TV the entire week for whenever i needed a snack. TheEJ was a bit put off that i'd eat week-old, unrefrigerated pizza. it's cute how she worries. hah.

during the trip, we walked a lot, saw some sites, walked some closes (narrow alleyways), toured some catacombs that were not as authentic as we'd hoped, and had a generally good time. here are some highlights from edinburgh, and i'll be one with stirling here soon (and finishing oktoberfest, i'm such a slacker). but you can see, my posting has increased in frequency, so i think i'm back on the horse, and should be caught up soon. here are ALL the edinburgh pix.

the foggy view from calton hill

TheJay and TheJulie taking in the national monument (also known as "edinburgh's disgrace"). modeled after the parthenon in rome, the monument was never completed due to either lack of funding or interest.

a photo of TheJulie taking a photo of the national monument

the scott monument named after sir walter scott, also has been informally described as the "gothic rocket ship".

the scott monument, also called "auld reekie" (old smokie) due to the it's color. the shale rock that it is made of leaks a sort of oil that the air pollution clings to making it look perpetually dirty.

sir walter scott of the scott monument fame.

TheEJ at old calton cemetary

a typical scottish close (narrow walking alleyway)

storage space TheEJ and i saw during the catacombs tour

spooky fog creeping across TheMeadows (which is strangely a public park with a free golf course superimposed on it)

directions for a chewable toothbrush

said chewable toothbrush (to clean my teeth after fried haggis meatballs). mmmmm....

the north side of edinburgh castle from castle street

the national church of scotland, the kirk

the stained glass of st. giles cathedral

haggis, neeps (mashed carrots), and tatties (mashed potatoes) at the tolbooth pub. i like haggis and then "neeps and tatties" sounds like "nips and titties". it's like the best meal EVER!

i can't seem to find any pix of rosslyn chapel. does anyone who was there with me have pix from there and edinburgh castle? i could've sworn i took loads, but they seem to be gone. you can send them or drop.io them, or however you wish to get them to me, i'd appreciate it. more later.

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.

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.

a favor from my peeps back in oHIo

i just found this, and because it's free, i'm asking you a favor. maybe after a journey to kahoot's or a night out on the piss, if you happen to cross the middle line near a white castle... PLEASE, someone try one of these for me and tell me how they are. i know i'm a freak, and i like white castle. i also like BBQ pulled pork. there's an extremely remote chance that i'll be done here in egypt by 30-june, but that means i just miss the free deadline by a day with travel. PLUS, you can re-use this coupon once every day from now until then (if it turns out to be good). let me know, please, someone, help a brotha out. you can even get me one and try to mail it, but i'm guessing customs would confiscate it, er no... get a few and super-freeze them for me. yeah, someone do that! you guys rock.

R&R alpha - berlin (days 6/7) - checkpoint charlie

we woke up late on the 6-october and with a slightly late checkout, we were on our way to berlin. we'd gone as far as getting a hertz rental car reserved, but nothing for a place to stay once we got there. we figured, big city... lots of tourists... plenty of room. we got directions to berlin which is pretty much "go north". when we picked up the hertz that we asked for hertz neverlost on, we got a kia sorento with becker indianapolis GPS. all i can say is it sucks bawlz. for one, it was stuck in portugese mode. it's not a touch screen or graphical or anything that a good GPS direction system should be. i mean, look at this!! anyone who's ever seen a garmin or a magellan or any other mid- to high-range GPS device has an idea how it should look, how it should feel. this basically tells you, "GO FORWARD (but in portugeuse)", "GO RIGHT (but in portuguese)". absolutely ridiculous. it's CD based, so you have to have the right CD in for it to get the directions or something. the buttons are completely non-intuitive as to how to adjust things. TheWayne drove the car down to the main level (since TheTav and i can't drive a manual transmission). at the front desk, i used my best pissed-off voice to get them to figure the damn thing out and get it on english. they replied, "it's in portuguese, we can't figure it out". DUMMKOPFS!! so, we hit the road and after massive amounts of trial and error, we got the thing to english. then putting in the destination was a tratm but from the directions we got from the hotel, we were able to get on the major highway without the sat-nav. we did our best to make TheWayne comfortable since he was the only one who could drive. the car maxed out at 185kph, which sucked, because, THIS IS THE AUTOBAHN, MUTTERFIKKERS!

we arrived in berlin and found a starbucks where i tried to use my novice hacking skills to use their internet to find a place to stay. when that didn't work, we went to an internet cafe where TheWayne and i looked up hotels and hostels to stay at while TheTav updated his facebook and made dates for when he was back home. TheWayne did the calling since i'm a phonophobe, but we found out there was an ICC convention in town and that is why all the places were booked. even hostels were full up. at one point, we could've gotten 3 beds in a barracks of sorts, but TheTav wasn't up for the non-privacy. while look around, we drove past an old-but-nice-in-it's-time hotel called the berlin excelsior. on a whim, i suggested we stop to see if they had any rooms, which amazingly they did. we didn't want to pay for 3 people since europe charges rooms per person, so we said there were two people and snuck the third one in. we returned the car to the hertz building which was an ordeal. seemingly you have to pull your car up to within INCHES of hitting the garage door before the ticket device spits out a ticket to let you in. i called security to let us in several times before he came out and showed us how to get in. after dropping off the car, we walked to the checkpoint charlie train stop back towards the hotel and grabbed some unexciting dinner, as most of the restaurants were closing and no one was really out. we went back to the hotel and smuggle our third-wheel back in. we pushed the two tiny beds together to made a tiny double bed. TheWayne and TheTav fell asleep on top of the covers, and like the lumps that they were, i couldn't get them to move so i bundled up a T-shirt as a pillow and slept smashed against the wall (as you can TheTav must've gotten cold in the night and pulled the blanket from under him).

we woke up late the next day for a big day out exploring the sites of berlin. we started off walking around tiergarten which is just a huge garden/park/zoo of sorts in berlin. we walked a while through this awesome park. it was nice and cool, very comfortable weather. during our walk, we saw a blue tent maybe a half a mile away and a naked guy walking around it cleaning up. cheap lodging, i guess. we came through tiergarten to the berlin victory column. this column was erected to commemorate the danish-prussian war victory but by the time it was completed, they'd also won the austro- and franco-prussian wars (thank you wikipedia). the victory column is set in the middle of a big round about encircled by 6 lanes of crazy german traffic. getting to it from the east or west is OK as there is a walkway that goes under the road. we were coming from the south, and being that we are boys, americans, and like a challenge, we ran across traffic to get to it... with no undue injury. on the way back, the traffic was a little heavier but nothing like egypt, so i was a pro. the only thing i worried about was what if i rolled an ankle. there would be NO chance for a car stopping. HEADLINE -- CLUMSY AMERICAN BITES IT WHILE RUNNING AWAY FROM VICTORY COLUMN - STUPID FAT AMERICANS!!! after the victory column, we worked our way eastward to brandenburg gate. i'm not one much for history, sadly, but i learned that the brandenburg gate was use as a party icon for the third reich and the nazi party. it was also an additional symbol of the division between east and west germany. either way, a pretty cool monument with a story some history buffs might be interested in.

from there we wound our way to the berlin wall and checkpoint charlie. there are only a few parts of the berlin wall still up as a sort of memoriam. instead they've placed in the road and sidewalk red bricks showing where the berlin wall ran. i thought that was a pretty cool idea, seeing the red bricks snake around the city. while you're walking around along zimmerstraβe (zimmer street) or any of the other streets along this area, there are wallboards put up along the street describing to you the different stages of the war, the run up to the war and the entire timeline. as i said, i'm not a huge history person, but we spent an hour or two just walking along reading about the history of this place. where we were standing was a "killzone" where people were murdered trying to cross the border. it gave the experience a far more visceral feeling than reading about it in a high-school history book or watching a documentary on the the history channel. i learned far more about the war and the war effort there, walking the sidewalk, than i had in all the years of my schooling. checkpoint charlie has turned into a bit of a tourist attraction where they have faux-german, russian, and US soldiers there to pose for pictures. i was a complete moron and got my actual passport stamped with the "official era-appropriate passport stamps of the time" by some street vendor. it looked official, he took up two whole pages with USSR, german, and US stamps. once i had it done, an american girl looked over my shoulder and asked if we were allowed to do that to which i replied, "i certainly hope so". we walked by later and the vendor had all the stamps covered up when a camera crew came by. that made me a bit suspicious. i looked at the fine print on the passport and MAYBE i shouldn't've had that guy stamp it. i'm going to claim ignorance. i bought a piece of the berlin wall at the checkpoint charlie museum/store. kinda cool. i'm guessing the commies didn't expect people to be making money off their wall of division. capitalism at its best.

the rest of the time was touristy, just hanging. TheWayne looked into us taking a train to prague and crashing in a hostel. we grabbed lunch at a traditionally german restaurant and for some reason i got mexican-style steak. we went back to the hotel to clean up for a bit. we went out then to grab dinner at an american style bar called juleps NYC. it was good. we met a waitress named christine. we tried to get her to go out with us after she was done. we thought she was almost for it, but alas, no. she told us about a place called schwarze cafe, which we checked out. i don't really recall much about this bar so it must not have been very good. i recall having absinthe (which i was disappointed in) and 2 beers at a time, i must've been on a mission. i think i recall the bar being really dark, and i have written down in my notes (yeah, i need notes) that the waiter was a shitehead. maybe TheWayne can enlighten... i have something about a bathroom written down? after the bar, we grabbed a 3 euro taxi ride in a cool big van (we didn't realize how close we were to our hotel). we snuck our third-party back to our room where TheWayne passed out and The Tav and i watched the biden destroy palin in the vice-presidential debates (yeah that's how long ago this happened, sorry, i'm so behind). tomorrow, we leave berlin.

checkpoint charlie post with guards

my ultimate dreamcar, the bugatti veyron, that we incidentally stumbled upon in a showroom while we were walking around.

me with my dream car

more berlin pix here if you are interested.

R&R alpha - oktoberfest (day 4) - PROST!!!

long time, no post on oktoberfest. i can't believe this vacation ended over 4 months ago, and i'm only 4 days into the story. sorry, for a recap, check out oktoberfest - the beginning then onto oktoberfest (day 2) - PFAND!!! and completing the flashback with oktoberfest (day 3) - drucken!

now that you're caught up, back to the story. TheWayne's friend, TheTav, was coming in to visit us for a few days at oktoberfest. his flight got in in the afternoon, and TheWayne wanted to check out the olympic stadium and the BMW museum/office/whatever it was. TheWayne and i walked in a light drizzle to the train station and after a few transfers and about 40 minutes, we were at the olympic stadium. when you come out of the train station, one of the first things you see is the BMW building. it is shaped like 4 piston cylinders, as you can see from the photo. now, i'm not big into BMWs or mercedes', etc. they are just too luxury for me, i guess. i prefer trucks or super sports cars like the viper or bugatti veyron. i wasn't really excited to go to check it out, but hey, give and take. after entering the building, i changed my mind. they had so many cool interactive displays on their new and developing technologies. they are developing heads-up night vision displays, assisted steering in slippery conditions, hydrogen-powered cars, etc. it was really interesting to the engineer in me. PLUS, i like zombies and apparently BMW made the zombie motorcycle in resident evil : apocalypse.

after BMW, we walked around the olympic stadium, and by "walk around", i mean, "walk around". we couldn't find our damn way into the thing. we saw people walking around inside, but after a thorough walk-around, we'd made no progress. during our exploration, TheWayne brought up how italians are EVERYWHERE! anywhere you go, you can run into an italian... at oktoberfest, in the middle of the egyptian desert, etc., they are everywhere, and they dress funny. really tight pants, too-big glasses (usually white and/or incredibly festooned), and fauxhawks. oh, and during this whole time, it was raining. as i've said before, i came to germany from the hot, hotness of egypt, thus i had neither cold-weather clothes nor wet-weather clothes, so i did my best with my long sleeve shirt and short sleeve T-shirt. the munich olympic stadium looks pretty cool to me. it's kinda like a medieval castle of sorts with chainmail holding it all together, as you can see behind TheWayne giving his it's-cold-and-wet-and-i'll-strike-a-goofy-pose pic. there are random support towers growing out of the ground all over the place to support the chainmail roof-like covering. we ran into some italians who asked us how to get to oktoberfest and we were like "WHOA! you are in the wrong part of munich, get on the train, and ask your way from there". we decided it was time to go back and meet up with TheTav. he had flown in from the states and had directions as far as the train station in feldkirchen, so we were going to be meet him at the bar right just outside. we'd gotten there... maybe... a little bit late. had a few beers waiting for him, then decided to check to see if maybe he made it to the hotel on his own. we'd gotten back and found him there, crashed in TheWayne's room. nice of the hotel staff to let a complete stranger-to-them into one of our room's despite him NOT being on the additional guest list.

after being introduced, we went our separate ways to shower and clean up for the evening's stein-fueled adventures. we walked back to the train station and were soon on our way back to oktoberfest, day 4. we walked around and showed TheTav the general aura of oktoberfest. he, too, was not expecting the huge amusement park rides scattered throughout the fairgrounds. we grabbed a few beers along the way at the outdoor stands, and finally settled at an empty table in the middle of a crowd at augustiner braü. we settled into a hardcore re-enactment of TheWayne's first night in germany. we were going to get TheTav so drunk he'd forget he was jet-lagged (like TheWayne). here's the only (pseudo) sober picture i have of TheTav, sadly the picture is a bit blurry, though this was the LEAST blurry we were all night. the augustiner was fun. we drank in the dark and the cold, listening to the uproarious singing and dancing pouring out the oft-opened doors of the beer hall. we talking about politics (everyone loved talking about obama when they heard we were americans), american security, the internet, etc. a general hodgepodge of conversation. the conversations blurred into each other and at one point, a girl i'd seen at the end of our table came to sit next to me. we were talking, about what i have no clue. i'd totally forgot i was even talking to TheWayne and TheTav. if i do recall (and i'd think this is true because i never think girls like me), the girl was kinda hitting on me. vague remembrances of "where are you staying?" and "when are you leaving?" float around my head, even to this day, but before i could respond, i heard TheWayne beckoning me back to a temporary sobriety... "ZAC, we got go! NOW!" i looked up and TheWayne was doing his best to hold TheTav upright in the walkway that goes past the tables. i was saying goodbye to the girl, saying that i had to go help my friend, then looked up and realized TheWayne was gone.

apparently, TheTav needed to get out of the crowd faster than i was saying goodbye. i caught up to them further down the walk, and we put his arms over our shoulders and walked/dragged him through the crowd. we navigated through the crowd amazingly well for two drunk guys and a passed-out zombie. occasionally, he would swim to the surface of consciousness and try to walk on his own which didn't help, mumble something unintelligible probably loosely related to an apology, the pass back out. we stopped to try to get him something to drink and eat, get something in his stomach as he hadn't eaten all day, and what to we get? greasy german sausages, what else? we got what we wanted and he was going to get what he got... glorious käse kreiners. these actually became the staple of our meals at oktoberfest. a heavenly german sausage with pressurized (i believe this was an unfortunate side-effect) swiss cheese in the middle. several days later, TheTav got one, and the first bite shot molten cheese and grease on a lady passing by in the opposite direction, she didn't notice... i did, hah. back to the story, we fed him and gave him something to drink and were on our way. he was pretty good from theresienwiese (the oktoberfest stop) to karlsplatz station, where we had to make a transfer. he was basically dead to the world until then. TheWayne and i had a load of fun at his obliterated expense, as evidenced by these photos. while at karlsplatz, i told TheWayne i had to piss, i'd be RIGHT back. i followed the signs up two escalators towards the WC only to find they lied, there was no WC, or i'd totally missed it, either is a very plausible possibility. SHITE! i mean, i had to PISS! i'm wandering around the station like a mad man, trying to find a pisser to no avail. i decided to give up and go back and just hold it, though it would be near torture, until the next station. then, it happened... i couldn't find them. i went back down the two escalators i'd THOUGHT i'd originally gone up, but the tunnel was the wrong color. then i found another platform, the right color but none of the trains going to the right place, i was starting to get pissed off when i found a platform that was going to the right place, but was the wrong color. i started to think i was mis-remembering the color of the station and that those fukkers left me here. i ALMOST got on a train to go after them, but decided to try to keep my cool (remember, my bladder is getting stretch marks at this point). i was frantically doing the "i-gotta-piss" dance around a german train station, and by some miracle-of-miracles, i'd found TheWayne holding TheTav upright, just where'd i'd left them... 35 minutes ago. by this time, TheWayne was thinking i'd pissed and left him, so i took over caring for TheTav since TheWayne had informed me that he now had to piss like a racehorse. he said "I'LL be right back". by this time, the station was pretty empty, TheTav was pretty comatose, so he didn't require much attention, so i did what i had to do. i waited for the last people on the platform to get on the train, i leaned TheTav up against the wall next to the trash can, and i walked to the end of the platform. there i found a nearly empty trashcan just around the corner from the main platform so that i could theoretically relieve myself in the trash can if i had so needed while both remaining out of out of the main eye line of the platform and still being able to keep an eye on TheTav. well, i turned theory into practice that evening. i feel REALLY bad for what i did, for the person who was going to have to empty that can the next day, but i did what i had to do. the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and i chose that one person having to cleanup one pissy trash bag was better than an entire train having to witness me soaked in my own urine. after that low-point, i went back and made sure TheTav was breathing, aiming his head toward the trashcan he was definitely needing at the time, wondering WTF happened to the Wayne. as it turns out, he got lost as well, though i don't recall whether he found the WC or not. i just know it took him only 25 minutes to get back.

TheTav had been purging pretty much since we got to this station. during my scouting for a place to water the flowers, i'd noted a lot of McDonald's bags in the trash cans. this was the only way we were going to get TheTav home in a fairly civilized manner. i found the biggest McD's bag i could, we grabbed TheTav, and we jumped on the next train toward feldkirchen. we were the last people on the train so TheWayne and i let the doors close, then we pushed him up against the doors with the cool glass on his face. this served two purposes: 1) so TheWayne and i could press him into a corner to keep him standing, and 2) to segregate him and his retching from the rest of the passengers in the car. the McD's bag came in handy numerous times throughout the last leg of our venture home. we apologized several times to the other passengers, and i believe a lady even gave us an individual-sized package of pocket tissues for our friend. when we made it to feldkirchen, TheTav was starting to come back to life. he could ALMOST open his eyes, and in small spurts, he was able to walk in an approximation of a straight line. he would lift his head on occasion and spit out a funny impersonation of an irishman, a cockney, or a scot. it was generally entertaining as we stumbled through the last field with the hotel in site. we made the unexciting trip in the elevator to our rooms, and day 4 was complete.