Colombia, get off my back already!

Seems like so long ago already! But here it is... Like I said, Facebook is to blame, there are like 50 pics there of Colombia.

Cruizin'

My posts have been infrequent in the past couple months... you have Facebook to blame for this. Picutres are easy to post there, just click and they upload/shrink automatically. But whatev.

So, since 11-Aug I've done a bit... the Peck's are in Egypt visiting... I joined them in Cairo and for a cruise down the Nile from the 23rd to 28th. That was great, my first visit to the pyramids in the 7 months I've been here, not bad! I wasn't in a hurry tho since they're not going anywhere. But it was a great time, good to see close friends overseas. They're due to my resort here tonight, spending a couple nights before they head off to Zambia. Should be a couple days of beach fun, golf (of course), and good times.

The cruise was great as well, pretty much the best place I've been in Egypt so far is the Nile. Sitting by the pool on the roof-top watching the Nile drift by was soothing and enlightening, especially after the hustle and caos of Cairo.

Last night we had a celebration for our project reaching 50% complete for construction. A good milestone, and a glimmer of hope that one day we'll be finished and get to move on! There is already talk of the next project here in Egypt, but I think my first choice will be to go back to Brisbane for the PNG project which is gaining momentum as an LNG job... my fingers are crossed.

Hope all is well in your part of the world!

Alexander The Great

I know, I know, I have haven't written much about Colombia yet, I'm still waiting for pictures to arrive that will make it easier to describe.

But I did do something out of the ordinary this weekend so I'll write about that... The scenery around Stella Di Mare, where we stay here in Egypt, is getting a little boring so I decided to take a roadtrip to Alexandria with one of the locals here. He travels back there most weekends to the Mediterranean city to see friends and family, as well as partake in the local entertainment such as clubs, restaurants, girls, scenery, and atmosphere. Alexandria is Egypt's second largest city with 3.5-5 million people, depending where you draw the line. And now the Wikipedia version: The city of Alexandria was named after its founder, Alexander the Great, and as the seat of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, quickly became one of the greatest cities of the Hellenistic world — second only to Rome in size and wealth. However, upon the founding of Cairo by Egypt's medieval Islamic rulers, its status as the country's capital ended, and fell into a long decline, which by the late Ottoman period, had seen it reduced to little more than a small fishing village. The city was revived by Muhammad Ali as a part of his early industrialization program. The current city is Egypt's leading port... Here's the full Wiki link.

I rented a car and left after work on Thursday. Alexandria 450 km drive from where I am on the Red Sea, and we had to travel through Cairo to get there. It was my first real driving experience (where I drove) in Egypt, which is an adventure in itself. First rule of driving in Egypt is there are no rules. People honk at random, pass on the inside, go 4 wide in two lanes, lanes mean nothing, drive the wrong way down one ways with their lights off, speed limits are for foreigners, etc etc. Most cars in Egypt have at least 2 dents and all of them need new shocks due to the crap roads. So anyway, driving was fun and we made it through the whole trip with no incidents or new dents.

After leaving work at 12:30 Thursday (we work a half day on Thursdays) we arrived in Alexandria around 6pm. To start off we went to the Bibliotheca (library/museum) that is famous in Alex. It was a good place to start to get a history of the city and get the lay of the land. Here is a picture of it at night:

After that we went for dinner at a place called The Sixties, which is Hisham's (co-worker) local haunt. Then it was off to the Plaza to meet his friends via the seaside motorway that took us past many historical spots as well as modern conveniences. The Plaza is a huge hotel/shopping complex where we looked around and eventually stopped for a coffee and desert. Picture a Starbucks the size of a Denny's restaurant pumping house music and filled with young couples, groups of girls, and groups of guys staring at the girls.

After a bit of oogling we left to find the apartment we rented in a western suburb of Alex, which was near the nightclubs we were planning on going to. A 10 minute drive on a freeway followed by a 15 minutes adventure on narrow streets, dark alleys, and tree-lined side streets led us to our modest 'villa'. It was a two bedroom flat with basically no amenities, but it was cheap and we weren't picky. We promptly opened the bottle of Bacardi and cracked a couple tall-boy Heinekens. This was around 10pm... around 11pm it was decided we'd have nap for an hour to gain some energy for the evening. After that we were up again to put another dent in the rum while we waited for more friends to arrive. When they finally did around 3am we were on our way and eventually left for the nightclub around 4am. There was 7 of us heading out, 3 girls and 4 guys. Bouncers are the same the world around, so after a bit haggling we were in. The club was right on the beach, playing electronic/dance music and was a balance of European and Arabic. There was no "hard drinks" served there, so if we wanted a taste of rum we had to go outside to the car... We danced until the sun rose around 6am... and then it was off to find some "street-meat", however we settled on fuul sandwiches, which was basically some sort of bean paste with onions and tomatoes in a pita. It was surprisingly satisfying... Next it was back to the flat, where we stayed up finishing the remaining booze and smoking hashesh on a carpet outside as the day got brighter and brighter.... Around 10am my Egyptian friends decided we'd better get some rest before hitting beach, so we had another nap until 1pm. Then it was up again, gathering the troops, and heading to a private beach club where we lounged on beanbag chairs and soaked up some sun. I didn't go in the Mediterranean Sea where we were because it was darker than chocolate milk, gross in other words. I'm sure it's nicer on different parts of the coast, but not where we were.

This put us at 4pm on Friday and we had to be back in Sukhna in order to get some sleep before work on Saturday. We left Alexandria about 6:30pm and were back on the Red Sea coast by 11pm...

All-in-all it was a good roadtrip... lots of laughs (even if I didn't understand the joke because they were speaking Arabic), good company, a good change of scenery, some action at the nightclub, and an interesting driving experience. It was a welcome change of pace although I sort of missed golfing... haha.

On another point... The Peck's arrive in Egypt on the 22nd of August... I'll be meeting them in Cairo on the Thursday where we'll spend a couple days doing the Pyramid thing, then I'm joining them for their Nile Cruise from the 25th to 28th. We fly to Luxor, board the boat, then disembark in Aswan and fly back to Cairo. Then they leave for southern Egypt for a diving trip and I go back to work.

This damn work thing, keeps getting in the way of my exploring Egypt and my golfing... oh well.

Maa el salamaa

Colombia, soon...

Colombia was awesome. It was a great holiday and great 3 weeks spent with friends to celebrate Brent and Lina's wedding! We had fun everywhere we went, saw the sites, partied hard, relaxed, shopped, etc...

I will post pictures, but I'm waiting for them to arrive. I took some pictures but Frumby and Bryan had way better cameras so I'm waiting for those to arrive in the mail to post some of them.

So I will be making a better effort to tell everyone about the trip, but not right now... another factor is that I've downloaded the Sopranos, which is killer, and it's been eating up my evenings. I'll try harder.

Where have you been??

Well, it's been awhile, my apologies. But there's honestly not that much going on here lately. Working 5.5 days keeps me out of most trouble, and my days off have been spent golfing, playing poker, golfing, frisbee, beach volleyball, and some eating thrown in. That pretty much sums up my weekends lately.

However, I'm leaving tomorrow to head to Colombia for Brent's wedding. I'll be there 3 weeks hanging out with Brent and Lina, the Pecks, John and Vanessa, and I think Scot Rose is going too. I'm sure we'll be hooked up with some Colomian relatives of Lina's to show us around.

I'm meeting the Pecks in Paris where we'll board a flight to Bogota. We'll connect to Bucaramanga where we'll be from Thursday to Tuesday for the wedding. Then we're all off to Cartegena for 10 days for some beach time (and apparently the filmed Romancing the Stone there). The we're all off to Bogota where I'll spend 5 days before returning to Egypt for another "rotation" on the 23rd.

Good times. Hope to have a few pics to post when I get back and of course some stories to tell.

Take care,
Ryan

Scramble

Second place at the Summer Scramble here last weekend:

Hairdryer

It was 43-46 degrees here a couple of days ago, on account of the hot desert wind blowing through. It was like a hairdryer set on high blowing in your face. It was so hot the shafts of my golf clubs were almost too hot to touch. Good times

No cell phones!

I went to my first embassy on Thursday. The "Canadian Club" was holding a pub night at the Canadian embassy in Cairo so me, James, Greg and his wife (the Canadians on our job) decided to go drink some Kokanee and listen to some Quebec rock music. We didn't know about the Quebec rock music before we went, but apparently most of the staff that work there are form Quebec so they got to mix the tunes. We also feeded on some pork roast and gulash, which was also a welcome reminder of life outside the mid-east. It was a good time, and I got a glimpse of nightlife in Cairo at the same time. While we didn't head out anywhere afterwards, there was a lot action on the street.

Friday was spent golfing in the morning, then off to the beach where we played some fris in the water, then some beach volleyball, then some water polo/rugby. Basically I run the old-farts I work with through a physical routine on Fridays in order to keep their tickers going and to clean out some of the beer and KFC they consume all week.

I've stopped doing the Pizza Hut / KFC thing at lunch... now I head to the Golf Hotel in our complex and do some putting practice while I wait for my food. It's pretty relaxing because the course is dead during the day and the weather is typically beautiful. So eating lunch on the terrace with the birds in the background staring at a green golf course is alright. Now all I need is someone to have lunch with! haha.

Anyways, life goes on in the desert. 25 days until Colombia.

Working in the oil industry

Working in the oil industry:
1. We work in weird shifts ... Like prostitutes.
2. They pay you to make the client happy ... Like prostitutes.
3. The client pays a lot of money, but your employer keeps almost every penny ... Like prostitutes.
4. You are rewarded for fulfilling the client's dreams ... Like prostitutes.
5. Your friends fall apart and you end up hanging out with people in the same profession as you ... Like prostitutes.
6. When you have to meet the client you always have to be perfectly groomed ... Like prostitutes.
7. But when you go back home it seems like you are coming back from hell ... Like prostitutes.
8. The client always wants to pay less but expects incredible things from you ... Like prostitutes.
9. When people ask you about your job, you have difficulties to explain it ... Like prostitutes.
10. Everyday when you wake up, you say: I'M NOT GOING TO SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE DOING THIS SH * T"... Like prostitutes.The only difference is the prostitutes can take Christmas and New Year's Eve off and they actually DO make a lot of Money!!!

6 string magic

The older you get, the more rules they are going to try and get you to follow. You just gotta keep on livin', man. L-I-V-I-N.

Wooderson: That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.

Where was I for my high school reunion?? The Facebook craze has spawned some memories of high school... For better or for worse I didn't stay close to many people or friends from high school once I started university, and now that Facebook is here I'm sort of regretting it. It's not that I think everyone else from high school is still wicked good friends with each other, but I think most kept in better touch than I ever did. Did they? Who knows I guess. Anyways, Facebook is here and it's bringing people together who may have never had the opportunity to re-unite, especially after missing their 10 year high school reunions. So, cheers.

May Long

Looks like it "one of those" long weekends in Alberta... rain and chilly temperatures. Sorry to hear that Calgarians, I hope some of you got out and had some fun anyways... I'd kill for a game of horseshoes right now. Seasoned Spitz by a camp fire under a tarp, socks steaming while draped over wet shoes. Gripping a softball bat with near frozen fingers, wearing a glove inside my baseball glove. In honor of my Canadian heritage I am sporting a coldsore at the moment. F that.

The sickness

Been a rough week. Last Tuesday something was up, so after work I went and grabbed some cold/flu drugs from the pharmacy and went to bed right after work. But, that was futile. I ended up spending 36 hours in bed and other places in my room with a case of Egyptitus. Apparently at the start of summer the "bugs" in the water and food are stronger, so even if you've been here awhile you have to get re-acquainted with them. So I did, and so did 3 or 4 co-workers as well as some of the Egyptian staff at the hotel. But there is some high powered pills called Antinal to battle them, and now I'm basically over it...

Bend it like Ahmed

Had a good weekend... Thursday after work me and Cowboy Ricky joined talked a couple of co-workers, Hossam and Hany, into taking us to a football match in Suez. We met them across the street from the Stadium and parked the cars. Hany brought his dad, who has a few connections around Suez due to him being the manager of the local motor vehicles department. So we found the nearest security guard at the gate, told him how it was going to be, then got escorted in. We took our seats in the general seated stadium, in the midst of the Egyptian throng looking for a key win in the viciously competitive national professional league. It was a good game, the visitors went up 1-0, but Suez tied it up before half-time. But Suez couldn't fend of the attack and went down 2-1 in the second half. But the crowd got behind the team and encouraged their players to press for more. After a sustained attack in the opposing end for a solid 3 minutes the visitors cleared the ball... one of their forwards looked like he was going to collect a loose ball but it was blatantly offside. But the linesmen missed it, didn't call offside, which left the opposing player to go in alone and score an insurance marker... all of this with under 5 minutes left to play. Needless to say the Suez team was hysterical, only to be out-done by their fans. Bottles, garbage, cans, and rocks rained down onto the field, aimed in the general direction of the overwhelmed linesman.

At this point our hosts (Hossam & Hany) encouraged us to leave a little early and beat the crowd... We concurred.

It was fun though... lots of chanting and cheering... the players all get down and pray after they score or make a good save, which is funny the first time you see it...

Thursday evening consisted of the weekly poker game with the boys. Oh yeah, and Friday I shot a 90 in a golf tournament. How do you go from shooting a 78 to a 90? I guess I'll keep practicing.

First rotation out is in sight

The flights are almost booked, the plan is in the works.... my first rotation out of Egypt will be July 4-23 to Colombia for Frumby's wedding and related digressions. That puts me "in-country", as they say in the biz, for 19.5 weeks. Nothing against Egypt but it will be a welcome break from the various nuances that we deal with over here... Mind you, my trip out will be to another non-English speaking country where things may also not run as smoothly as in a place like, say, Calgary. Whenever I get to live full-time in a Western 1st world country again I don't know what I'll do with myself... being able to drink beer out of a glass I know has seen soap and hot water, buy something with a price tag and know I'm not 'taking one u.t.a.', drive a car where road rules are published and not optional, and not have to a time-zone calculation before I make a phone call only to realize that it's 3am at the destination.

Anyway... Cairo to Bucaramanga for a week via Paris and Bogota on the 4th, then to Cartagena on the 10th for a week, then to Bogota for a week before returning to Cairo on the 22/23rd. Another small bonus: surf in Cartagena.

Action in the back section

Anything out of the ordinary here...?? Hmm, nothing too major. The talent is scarce and hard to come by... most of the tourists that roll through are Egyptian, married, or old. There's not really a lot of action around here, so young people don't frequent our resort... Last week a group of about 80 Czech pharmaceutical salespeople rolled through though. This basically shut down all thought and normal activity during the week amongst the co-workers as well as the staff at the resort (also mostly male). Reason being is that pharmaceutical companies sell drugs to doctors, who are mostly male, so they hire hot young women aged 22-35. Needless to say there were a couple late nights trying to communicate with them, but no one really had that much success. I remembered a few Czech words from my trip to Prague, but not enough... mostly I repeated "prosim", which is please, a lot. There was one drunken dance session on Thursday, but no fruit were borne.

The summer has started here though... there seems to be a few more activities around the resort than usual, so we'll what happens... I'm told that the villas in the resort compound, which are owned by families in Cairo mostly, will start to pick up throughout the summer as well. So there will be more people around, I'm just not sure what that translates into for "action".

Spit-Bomb-Scratch-Break.

Noodles

Finally, some emotion on the Flames' part in this series. Not exactly the most tactful response, but hopefully they follow it up on the ice tonight.

Austria eh?

There's a giant (tall) Austrian girl named Ann stalking me at the hotel. Normally this would be a good thing but I'm scared. She drinks white wine like it's apple juice and the tree trunk's she carries herself around on could have me tapping out after round 1.

Sweden, eh?

Shot a 37 tonight after work... that followed up a mediocre weekend round of 85. I know most of you don't care, but to break 40 on semi-regular basis is an accomplishment for me.

Had a good weekend as well. Thursday we went golfing after work as usual, then went for dinner with the golf pro from the course and two visiting Swedish female golf pros. We went to a seafood restaurant 15 minutes up the road where we picked our fish from coolers on the counter... we literally filled a table for four full of seafood with fish, snapper, calamari, and prawns (shrimp), all for 400 EGP, or about $70 USD. A steal of a deal. After dinner we headed back to Calle's place for a few more drinks, then off the "nightclub". At another hotel here in the complex there is a "disco"... we were 4 of maybe 20 in the whole place. Overall it was a good night, and a welcome variation to the norm.

Friday was good too. Started off the day with a round of golf, then went on a 3 hour snorkeling tour on a boat with 10 other people from work and their families, then had a tennis match at 5pm. Needless to say I was a little bagged by the time I got to tennis, so Juan beat me around the court... Next time we play he told me to stay home and rest before.

Now it's Saturday evening, and I'm waiting for to use Overmann's friend's slingbox to watch the Flames' game. Very nice.

Missing Oz

I've been listening to Triple J, a radio station in Australia, at work a bit lately and it's totally making me miss Australia. I miss the music scene in Brissie, surf, humidity, the accents, food, people, and walking to work.

Ain Sukhna Open

I played 9 holes after work last night...

#10 Par 4, shot 4, even

#11 Par 5, shot 6, +1

#12 Par 3, shot 4, +2

#13 Par 4, shot 4, +2

#14 Par 4, shot 4, +2

#15 Par 5, shot 5, +2

#16 Par 4, shot 2, even -- had a good drive with about 50m to go and one hopped a sand wedge over water into the hole.

#17 Par 3, shot 3, even

#18 Par 4, shot 5, +1 -- on in regulation, but left the par putt on the lip.

Result: a +1 37 on the back 9. 2 bogies and an eagle. Best ever.

Now the goal is to shoot 37 without fluking an eagle on a par 4...

Sling

I managed to watch the Calgary vs. Detroit game 2 live. It was on at 1pm ET, which is only 6 hours behind me, so it was on at 7pm here. I did this by borrowing a friend of a friend's "Slingbox" connection. Basically it is connected to a person's cable box and computer/internet in Canada, and then you can watch it over the internet from anywhere in the world. It was sweet, except that we lost badly again.

If anyone out there has one, or is thinking about getting one, man would I like to watch it sometime... The 2 English channels I get here show episodes of stuff from 2 years ago. Plus there's no CBC for hockey, no TSN for curling or baseball, no Late Night with Conan...

Rome Pics

Here are some pictures of my trip to Rome in April 2007. We had 5 days off of work in Egypt so me, James, and Alisha decided to take a quick trip to Rome. We rented an apartment near the Vatican and saw pretty much most of the center of the city while we were there. There was a lot of walking, eating, drinking, shopping, and looking at old stuff. Being Easter it was relatively busy everywhere we went, especially the Vatican on Sunday and Monday.

Here we are the door to the apartment waiting for the lady with the key:
Looking left from the door, towards the Vatican:
Looking out our back window at a wall that connects the Vatican with Castle Saint Angelo:
Went for pizza and Peroni right away:

Piazza Del Popolo:

Rome Pics

Inside Saint Peter's Basilica:
Outside:
They were busy setting up all the chairs for Sunday's services:

Inside again:

Rome Pics

A statue somewhere in Rome:
The Pantheon:

Trevi Fountain:

Rome Pics

Piazza Navona, I bought a painting from this guy:
Piazza Navona:
Foro Romano:

Rome Pics

The view from Palatino:
A fountain in front of our apartment:
Fori Imperalli:
Palatino:
Piazza Venezia:

Rome Pics

Lunch near the Colleseum:

Inside Colosseo:

Gladiators outside Colosseo:

Rome Pics

Italians sunning themselves on Isola Tibernia:

Dayun

I've told my mom, so now I can tell you guys... I went on a trip to Suez a few weeks ago on a motorcycle hunting trip. I enlisted a couple Egyptians that I work with to be my escorts and negotiators because everything in Egypt is cheaper if you're Egyptian. Suez is about a 40 minute drive north of work, so we burned up there in no time. We checked out a couple "motorbike" stores and finally settled on one in run an old shrew'ish dude. There wasn't a lot of choice, and nothing over 150cc's, whish is probably better for my safety sake (reference motorbike incident in Vietnam). After a bit of haggling I picked up the beaut below for a skinny 3800 Egyptian Pounds, or roughly $675US. Not too shabby. I took the boys out for a celebratory seafood dinner (best meal in Egypt so far). Part of the deal was delivery to the resort where we're staying. So we went back to the joint, loaded the bike in a pick-up (after helping change the rear left tire), and then followed the guy back to the Stella Di Mare (home).

After smuggling it through security, it stays neatly parked right outside the main hotel entrance. Security keeps a close eye on it, and in return I let the security guards take it for a burn around the parking lot every once in awhile. This has been a good arrangement so far except for the guy who ran it into a wall on the 3rd day I owned it. Just scratches though, give it character and a story!

I mostly use to get back and forth between my hotel and the golf course... short shopping trips... and to show off to any Czech girls hanging out front of my hotel.

Roma

Has anyone told you I'm going to Rome this weekend? Well, it's true. We get April 5-9th off and a couple that I work with (James & Alisha) thought it would be a good idea to check out Rome. They asked me to tag along, and it was either that or golf for 4 days straight. So off we go. I booked a flight on Egypt Air from Cairo to Rome for $366 USD. Not too shabby... We've also booked an apartment, so the weekend is shaping up. The apartment is in the middle of Rome, right in the heart of the city where most of the cool stuff is.

I'm looking forward to it. It'll be a good break away from work and the monotony of life at the Stella Di Mare.

Any news from anyone out there?