Mom's Favorite Meal.......Kuwait Style

Mom I know that this is your FAVORITE summer time meal. So this is just for you. :)

Random stuff

This is what happens when the water drops a little bit in the tanks on top of the building. It turns this color about twice a week, usually right in the middle of a person taking a shower. Not a whole lot of fun. Note the nice yellow color.



This picture is a composite that my roommate and I took from "somewhere". It was as clear when we took this last night as it has been since I have been here.

Good day on the food front!

Today has been a good day. Our DPM gave me a pound of real American Oscar Mayer hickory smoked PORK bacon. AND I found out that the base px sells peppermints!! Bacon and peppermints are going to go a long way towards my mental health.

Salmiya Kuwait Fire Station No. 2

We took a couple of our guys to the International Clinic to get their blood work for their visas today. On the way back we stopped at a Kuwaiti fire station to chat with the guys. They were very friendly and showed us around for quite a while, proving that all firefighters are alike.

They had no preconnects at all, and all of their hose was rubber instead of cloth. Very strange. Their big trucks were Mercedes. Their light rescue was a 3500 Chevy. All Holmatro extrication tools. But, none of them were in g-force proof mountings. They were just laid in the compartments unsecured. I couldn't tell what kind of airpacks they used, but they looked similar to MSAs.

All in all, these guys were very professional, and they really had their stuff squared away.

Just remember, if you need the fire department in Kuwait, dial 777.

Learning To Play Cricket, Kind Of.......

While I was writing the post below, my roommate was looking out the window and asked, "What are those guys doing out there?" I got excited because they were playing cricket and, as I said before, I wanted to go learn to play. I convinced him to come down with me and we got some decent pictures. Needless to say, the poor TCNs didn't know what to make of two non-athletic Americans wanting to play with them. But, in true international hospitality, they invited us to play (ok, we asked to play, but they let us, that's the point). Neither of us will be trying out for England's cricket team anytime soon. Lots of fun, although, I still have no idea how to play cricket.




P.S. TCN means Third Country National. Like Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Filipino, Indian, you get the idea. And I have no idea where any of these guys are from.

Chicken King

This is the Chicken King where wee go to eat a few times a week. Note the open flame rotisserie. The guy in the orange shirt takes the chicken and slides it down the pole and then cuts it up. The food costs around 2 KWD, $7. Chicken, rice, hummus, and pita bread. Enough food for two people for a meal and a snack of rice and hummus on pita for later. Take the pita bread, spread the hummus on it then pile on the rice. Yum!

Base Trip and Towers Trip

Last week we went to one of the bases to get our installation access badges. We left at 0300 and drove for "a while". When we got there, big surprise, we had to wait. Got our install badges and we went home. We were all pretty pooped.

The pictures are taken from our van on the way back from the base. As you can see, there is literally nothing for miles upon miles. Sand, dirt, dead camels, dead sheep, and Bedouins. That's about it.




Drove up to Kuwait Towers last week. They are telecom and water storage towers on the northern coast of Kuwait. Kind of nice to break up the monotony, but all of us were more interested in looking at the water park and paintball field at the base of the towers than looking at Kuwait City. Nice to go do something other than sit in our rooms or go to the mall shopping.



One more picture. I took this the other day, and I meant to post it then, but I forgot. It is a bunch of kids playing cricket in the dirt field about 500 metres from our apartment building. Next time they are out there playing, I'm going down there and learning how to play cricket.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Happy Father's Day Dad. Wish I could be there.

One more post before bed....

I forgot to add this in to the previous post, so I will just make a new one. I thought this picture was nice and some of you might enjoy it. It is from the roof of our building looking out towards the City.

GOMER PYLE, WHAT IS YOUR MALFUNCTION!?!

It's a movie quote people. You have to figure out the movie though, 'cause I'm not telling.

Anyway, yesterday we had a meeting at 1700. No big deal. Just meet in the other building at 1700. Three people were late, four didn't even show up. So, we had to meet for PT at 0600 this morning. On our day off. The first day where we haven't had to get up to go over to a meeting since we have been here. Needless to say, things were a little tense between the attendees and the slackers last night.

This morning we all got up, whet downstairs, where our Program Manager was sitting, he checked our names off his list, then dismissed us. I wish he would have just PTed us. He should have. I don't think some of these guys are going to learn without it. Oh well. I went ahead and ran for 20 minutes. What else are you going to do at 0600 in the desert??

It is 2300 and its hotter than it has been all day long. There is an amazing amount of sand in the air. We drove to the Fahaheel Bazaar this evening. It was packed, with lines of cars parked everywhere, and people all over the place. It is kind of like Chinatown in NYC and the State Fair all rolled up into one, without the food. I will have to take some video and pictures to post.

It is fun to go and haggle with the guys in the shops, even if you don't buy anything. We go and try to see how low we can talk them down. Everything is negotiable here. Even exchange rates from non-standard exchangers, such as shop owners. I have been able to get our nearest electronics shop to give us $3.57 per KWD 1. The true exchange rate is around $3.4258 something. The Western Union gives us $3.50 but you have to drive 30-45 minutes to get there. It's more fun to let the new guys try to haggle with the store owners and then step in before they get ripped off.

You only get ripped off once though.....

A little knowing goes a long way.....

There have been a few developments over the last couple days. We found out that the infrastructure isn't even in place to have internet in our apartment building, so instead of a few weeks, we are looking at several months at least. If an effort to appease us a little bit, they opened two apartments in the new office building and put internet in there. It is a bit of a hike to get there, so it's not perfect, but it is better than nothing. Three of us have internet cards on our own and are sharing the cost of time between us. The internet cards are a lot faster and more reliable than the wireless in the office building.
Some of us found out where we will be working. I guessed correctly, for those of you who know what I guessed when I was at home. Again, OPSEC regulations say I can't type it on here.

Still no word on when we will begin work, or when I or any of the others will be moving on to our next assignments. Hopefully soon.

Love you all lots, and thinking about home.

Sandstorm City and Barbeque Pictures

They bought us a grill so we decided to have a grill potluck and see how stuffed we could make ourselves. You can see on the picture chickens, beef sausages, peppers. We also had vegetables and regular beef hotdogs. Before anyone asks, I can't tell you the names of the guys in the pictures. OPSEC.

We woke up this morning to a sandstorm that blew up overnight. It happens twice or three times a week over here it seems. Mission one has become finding a scarf for my face and nose for when I'm on base. If it is this bad in the city, it will be a lot worse in the desert on the base.

We are cleaning our apartments three times a week from top to bottom and we still can't keep the dust down. You live in the dust, live with the dust. It has just become part of our lives. I understand why everything over here is tile. Every time I lay down at night in my bed, I can smell the dust. No one's allergies are acting up that I know of, but a few guys have had some upper respiratory problems because of the dust and dry air. I have so far, skirted most of the problems that have plagued some of the other guys. I got slightly dehydrated night before last and yesterday morning; I wasn't paying attention to how much I wasn't drinking. You realize it fairly quickly because you get a very bad headache that comes on quickly. I am drinking anywhere from a gallon to a gallon and a half of water a day, and I can only assume when we start working on the base I will be drinking more.

**Edited on 13 JUN 2009. I don't think that I ought to show the guys' faces like I had them.

First post from Kuwait

Hey everyone. After finding out that we STILL don't know when we're getting internet, I decided to walk to Starbucks and pay KD 3 for five hours of internet access. We have been here a little over a week and we are learning A BUNCH. We are living in a brand new apartment building in a suburb/town somewhere around Kuwait City. They are very nice, with two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen. We have went shopping at all the bigger malls in the immediate area. The one we went to a couple days ago has 7 Starbucks in it. We don't know when we will be starting work yet. We drove to a few of the work sites this morning. I have no idea yet where I will be working. Our vehicles are supposed to be here sometime soon, which will be nice, as we have been taking a taxi everywhere we have been going. At KD 2 to KD 5 round trip, it can get expensive quickly. We walk everywhere that we can, but sometimes it is just too far. The weather today is a high of 41 C and a low of 30 C with winds 25-45 km/h. Our visibility today has been around 5 miles, rather than the normal 10+ miles due to the amount of sand in the air. Most of the time driving today our visibility was 1-2 miles, but it dropped several times to 100-200 meters, and one time dropped to around 30 meters due to sand. The sand blowing across the road looks like snow blowing across the road, only tan of course. Well, that's about all the information I have for now; I will try to get on here more often now that I bought time. Hopefully we get internet soon and I can get my magic jack phone up and working. Talk to you all again soon.