ITS COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!

I'm freezing my ass off here! This isn't a proper desert country! Aren't deserts supposed to be cold at night and warm during the day GAH!!! Its been sitting on about 1-2 degrees at night and the days aren't much better...

So, other than that much and nothing has been happening. I've spent an insane few weeks trying to research property in bahrain which is a begucking nightmare for anyone who is used to the GOGOGO approach to buying a house in Australia. Here, the attitude is truly Shwey Shwey...for starters, I swear Bahraini's have a four day weekend because no matter the business you can't get anyone on the phone from the beginning of the Saudi weekend on Thursday to the end of the Dubai/rest of the world weekend Sunday. And then when you get through the conversation usually goes as follows.

Part 1:

George: Hi There I'm interested in properties in Bahrain for foreign freehold purchase
Spacy the Real Estate Agent: I think maybe we have no properties.
George: It says on your website that you have some, are they not available?
Spacy: I this maybe you should contact us through our website, Inshallah we can help you then.
George: I did that, no one contacted me so I'm calling you.
Spacy: Oh, ....How are you today?
George: Fine, How are you?
Spacy: Fine...fine...the weather, it is no good.
George: No its quite cold at the moment,
Spacy: Yes, and we had George Bush visit the other day, very busy....veeeery busy.
George: Oh, that must have been exciting.
Spacy: Yes, yes yes
George: About properties for sale, do you have any?
Spacy: I think maybe we might have one,
George: Oh great, can you tell me about it?
Spacy: No, it is not for you...
George: Ah, well thank you very much, its been nice talking to you
Spacy: Inshallah if you contact us through our website, we will have something for you.
George: (BANGING HEAD ON DESK)

Part 2:

George thinks hmm, on a hunch I'll call one of the lady real estate agents at the same real estate agency.

George: Hi there, I'm enquiring about freehold proper---
Superwoman: Yes we have a number of listings which I'm sure you saw on our website, what would you like to know and when would you like to come to Bahrain to view the properties?
GAHHHH

Unsuprizing to me, the ladies are the most effient business people you'll find in country because they have to work their asses off to prove themselves.


This is nothing though...its gets much more interesting...so far I've had guys try and sell me villas that are exempt from foreign purchase and when I called em on it they just said, 'oh, well inshallah they will become available for purchase for you by the time you make the payments...'


So that rant aside, Anthony just got his first taste of the Aramco performance appraisal process. Which he was warned about by multiple guys before he came here. An expatriate worker or a Shea muslim can never get above an 'average' at Aramco. No matter how well you've done you'll never get told you've done well because that might mean that one of the Saudi guys loses face if they have to receive a lesser rating and it might mean that the expats or shea guys get promoted too high when they can't get past the job level 16 glass ceiling. If all the expatriates get low ratings then everyone's happy. (Well except Anthony who should have known better than to open the damn performance appraisal email!)...

So, we're off to Bahrain this weekend to potentially buy a house...hopefully...well actually we're headed over to have a few glasses of (proper non meths like) wine and some decent food in celebration of Australia Day. With luck two fellow Aussies Craig and Aumi can come on over with us which would be great.

Other than that hmmmm....I'm going home to Perth for a few weeks, (well a week and a bit) in two weeks to take care of house renting and uni stuff which should be marvellous. Anthony's looking forward to me returning with thermals (who would have thought you'd need em here?). He's currently jousting with his HR department over getting leave to see Grandad in the UK in March/April so he couldn't take a few days off to go back home.


Anyways this is getting to be something of a boring post so I shall go off to rug up and conquer my little cold engined golf cart Brunhilde!

A Massive Week

Well its been a full on week! The above picture is of AJ n I on our delightful break from Saudi Arabia having a much needed drink and being slightly tipsy. I'll upload the rest when I get some more batteries for my camera.

Weather wize, the Shamal is in (cold cold sandy winds) so there's a layer of miscroscopically fine desert dust absolutely everywhere. You'll just wipe a surface and two minutes later it'll be dusty again. This has alternated with rainy thunderstorms which are pretty spectacular. Or would be if they didn't all happen at night! However we got our first taste of Saudi roads and driving after rain and its taking you life in your hands. There is no drainage here so even in camp the roads were covered in some places with up to a foot of water. My golf cart got drowned in one of them and I had to ask a really helpful eastern expat guy to push me out (he was smarter than me and wearing wellies). He is turn got to laugh the entire time at my sputtering little waterlogged cart parping off down the street.

That aside, I made the mistake last year of volunteering to be on the board of a coffee morning thing they do here and I've managed to greivously offend the lady whose been doing it for years and she is now not talking to me except for trying to snipe at me in public. I sent out an email that listed things I and the other new guys on the board might need to know about how to run this place (after checking it with one or two of the other guys to make sure it was as innocuous as possible) and she took it really badly. So it looks like I'm going to have to step down from this thing, take any abuse she hands out and just not go up that end of town for a while. She's a really nice lady, just older (62 or so) and used to doing this thing her way so wires crossed etc...she's out of the country for five weeks so I'm waiting to see if she's still all worked up when she gets back. (Welcome to the Ras Tanura Fishbowl)

So this leads me to the next thing thats going on...Anthony and I loved Bahrain so much I'm currently working out how to invest in a house there and how to move us in the next few months. Its actually slightly quicker for him to get to work from there and a hell of a lot cruizier. (So that's going to be my excuse for quiting this coffee thing not that I'd move to Bahrain to quit a coffee thing...Bahrain's for the food, the wine, the lack of living Aramco and the ability to drive safely)

Anthony has set me onto this whole bahrain thing because he doesn't want to know about it until we're in the moving truck and he knows what an obsessive bugger I am, so I'm enjoying the challenge.

In addition to all this I've restarted my PhD full force and its great. Since we get up at five and don't go to bed until about 10 its playing a major role in taking up my time and taking my mind off camp politics. Mind you, I am getting slightly housebound and am starting to look like a pretty scary hermit creature.

So thats about it for now. The food here is as dismal as ever and I did consider having a 'salad' analysed for alien life forms the other day.

Aisha, one of my friend's here, has just had her parents arrive from a trip to Pakistan (They from the UK). They were visiting a relative who lived right neer Bhutto's house and the descriptions of the wreckage after the riots was just plain scary. But more on that later...I have to go do some curtain twitching.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all you revelers out there. We were in Bahrain for new years and had many a toast to everyone's good heath and then many more just to make sure...my head still hurts:)

We just got in from our trip today and I have much to update including the story of the hamour sushi (don't ask) and many descriptions of Bahrains national day...all very exciting let me tell you!

Anyways my laptop battery is on the wane and I've got to go over ----------> there and beat anthony repeatedly around the head for not moving from his new XBox 360 and five meelion games he's trying out (christmas and b'day presents) for the last five hours GAH!

I shall post some fascinating photos tomorrow