suspicious, with potato chips

Today was a great day because my unrelationship with hot guy is finally over. After not seeing him for a week I went to the beach today and he showed up in the afternoon with 6 kids in tow. None of them appear to be over the age of 8. I knew he was going to have a billion kids. His wife is even better looking than he is, and he appears to be like typical dads, shuffling the kids over to her when they start crying. Good for her, if she likes doing the shit work.

And, I finally figured out today why he might have been staring at me. He's friends with the guy who runs the gym here. The gym guy, if I were going to describe him as an inanimate object, would be one of the bottom stones in the great pyramid. He's about as wide as he is tall and looks like he could bench press a truck.

I've always thought he was annoyed by me because I'm always making suggestions on the music, how to save energy by turning all the tvs off, better configurations for the gym equipment, etc. But this past week, every time I've gone into the gym, he gets on the treadmill next to me and walks really slowly while staring at me. I finally figured out today that he has a crush on me because I was looking for the scale and he ran and got it for me, and then he stood near the treadmill and picked my towel up off the floor every time I dropped it. So, I think hot guy was staring at me maybe trying to figure out what the gym guy might see in me.

Of course, the gym guy is married, which goes without saying here. The single men here are all migrant workers and Nepalese taxi drivers who want to marry an American so they can get a blue passport.

The good thing is I discovered on the scale at the gym that I've put on 3 pounds in the past two weeks. When I got here I weighed around 120 lbs. After ramadan I was down to 106. Now I'm at 110.

Likely that's because my colleague N introduced me to my new most favorite thing ever, mango frescettas. We get them from this french coffee shop across from the base. They take two mangos and grind them up with ice. It's the best thing ever, although half way through I get a sugar headache and have to take a break from drinking them. I have one every day, though one day I had two. I felt sick and had to lay down.

Though, after the first run to get mango frescettas I was no longer allowed to go pick them up because N got me in trouble. I don't have an official pass to get on the base, but most of the guards just wave me through as long as the driver of the car I'm in doesn't slow down when we get to the gate. But N, for some inexplicable reason, ALWAYS slows down. Usually I can talk my way into the base by showing my temporary pass and smiling.

But, the first time we went to get mango frescettas I only brought money and didn't have my pass. I was sitting in the back of N's car because when I sit up front and can see his driving first hand I'm so terrified I almost have a heart attack (it's never a good thing when N is entering a traffic circle with a billion cars in it going so fast on the turn that the steering wheel is shaking - but, that's a normal occurrence). He thinks it's funny that I sit in the back and calls it "driving miss daisy".

Anyway, I was in the back of the car with my mango drink and a bag of potato chips that I was only supposed to be holding for N. We were approaching the gate and I was like "N, speed up, speed up speed up" because he was slowing down. He did speed up and then suddenly slammed on the brakes when we got to the guard shack. I was like "DUDE, why did you do that???" as the guard approached. N didn't have his pass either. The guard made him get out of the car, and asked him who that suspicious blond was in the back of his car. N said "why do you think she's suspicious?" and the guard said "because she's eating potato chips".

N looked over and started yelling at me for eating his potato chips. I told him I had to because the mango drink was giving me a sugar headache. Then N said that he hadn't had breakfast and now he was going to starve because I ate his potato chips. I handed the bag to him and apologized. The potato chips were from Kuwait and tasted horrible so I didn't want anymore anyway. The guard interrupted us yelling at each other, yelled at both of us to never forget our pass again, and let us go.

Then the project manager got a call about us not having our pass, and said I'm never allowed to get a mango frescetta during work again. Which is fine with me. The less time I spend in N's car the better. Lest you think I exaggerate about his driving, he failed the driving test in the US 7 times and wasn't allowed to take it again. So he took it in Malaysia and failed twice before passing. Then he failed the UAE test, but realized he could get an international driver's license with his Malaysia license and that's what he drives on here. Scary.