flip flops vs. combat boots

Last week I got to meet some of the contractors I'll be working with when I did a two day training class for them. It was interesting to watch the expression on their faces when they walked in to find me as their instructor. Most of the guys took it in stride. One guy, though, was pretty militant about his views of women, and refused any help from me when he was trying to complete the exercises. Then the little bastard gave me a "good" rating on the evaluation, while rating everything else about the class "excellent".

The very important person to win over in the class liked me so the rating doesn't matter. The VIP is an ex fighter pilot, and we had some interesting discussions about the F-16 (my dad was the lead designer on the F-100 engine, so I immediately had street cred with the VIP). While at first I was worried to do my usual routine teaching class, after a few hours when they were responding to my jokes I decided to just pretend I was in the US.

I had been warned that people would fall asleep in my class and would want to leave early because of ramadan, but actually it was hard to get rid of them at the end of the day. And at one point everyone was laughing and yelling so loud the program manager came in to see what was going on (we were having a drawing race, and at the end I realized I had written all over the white board with a permanent marker - enter the tea boy to clean it with windex and a billion kleenex while the VIP gave a demonstration of "dry erase markers" and "permanent markers" in engli-arabic - I am probably glad I couldn't understand the arabic parts).

Today I went to the base to meet my customer. The base is in the middle of nowhere and is surrounded by road construction so it's pretty difficult to get to. I had to take a taxi to the supermarket across the street, where A was waiting for me. Then we drove out of the parking lot, made a u-turn, and entered the base. What's so crazy is that I could have walked across the street (it's only 6 lanes) but there are barriers up everywhere to keep people from doing that. So instead of a 5 minute walk we have to drive 10 minutes to get on base. And then, after all the drama of getting my pass so I could enter the gate, the guard didn't even ask for it. He just waved at me.

Most of the people I met today were very nice. My favorite is a captain, female. She looks like the emirati version of Angelina Jolie and her uniform is really cool. She wears a black head scarf, then has this very masculine looking square jacket with a bunch of military stuff stuck all over it, and then she has a long skirt that goes to the floor, and poking out from the hem are her black combat boots. She even has her own office.

Most of the day was spent with A trying to figure out our work schedule for the next few months. There's a lot to do. I found it funny that, at the end of the day, when I gave A a list of what I was going to work on for the rest of the week, he said "it's really weird to me that you are doing work". I sometimes wonder if I'm not really a consultant.

And, I've decided, unless something horrible happens, I'm going to Banff in November. Work is fun, but I really need to get my book published. I'll be breaking the news to Dr. T later this week.