and it's only june

This was taken in the Texas Kid's car when he dropped me off at the intercon. That's celsius. For those of you (like me) who are metrically challenged, that's 133.7 degrees F. And this was taken at 5 pm this evening, when it's "cooling off".

I'm not exaggerating. It's hot here.

wonder if the taliban will try to recruit me

I just got back from shooting at the officer's club.

I almost didn't make it there. I got into a taxi at the intercon, and the driver drove aimlessly for 10 minutes before saying "I don't know where is this officer's club. You have a map?" I was like "you're the driver, don't YOU have a map?" He pulled out a cartoon map they hand out in the tourist club area. The officer's club is not in Abu Dhabi so it obviously wasn't on the map.

"You get out of my cab now" he said. I was like "WHAT?" It was unbelievably hot outside, and I needed to get to the officer's club in 20 minutes or I would be late. He said "my friend, he will come pick you".

So I sat on the side of the road fuming for 5 minutes and then the friend showed up. He took me to the officer's club hotel and said the shooting range was there. It wasn't. I started the kilometer slog in the hot sun to the range and then luckily ran into one of my co-workers, who gave me a lift.

The COO of the company I'm consulting for was there. He sat next to me in this theater style area (imagine a movie theater with only 30 seats, 10 in each tier) and we chatted for a half hour while we waited for our range time (the theater area is about 5 feet away from bullet proof glass that looks onto the range so you can watch people shoot). He's a super nice Jordanian guy who studied in the US, and he's always coming out with these crazy expressions. Today he said "holy toledo!" when he looked at my target, because I got a bull's eye (I admit that I had a lot of bad shots too). It always makes me laugh when he says stuff like that, and I think he does it on purpose. 


The COO had never shot before so he decided we would go together. There are 6 lanes at the range, but two were taken up by the sheik's kids, so only two of us were allowed to go in at a time (even though we had the range reserved, the sheik takes priority), with two empty stalls between us and the kids. A guy stood right behind me at all times to make sure I couldn't face any direction except forward with my gun. Then, when I was done shooting, he told me to put my hands up and back away from the gun before he reloaded my clip.


Then they left and some seriously terrorist looking guys came in. I don't know what the guy next to me was doing, but his casings kept flying over the divider into my stall. For those of you who have never shot before, the casing is HOT. My work colleagues were watching this and laughing as I would flinch every time a casing hit me on the head or shoulder. Then two of the guys that work for me that came decided it would be fun to sing "it's raining bullets" to the tune of "it's raining men", with the Texas Kid doing this little dance of me jumping around when a casing hit me. Ha ha ha.

The guy who manages the range is Paki, retired army, and not only did he find pink ear protectors for me, but he also let me load my own gun after I finished my first two clips and he let me shoot a fourth clip for free. As they say, you get what you pay for.

He thought he could instruct me to be a better shot. He stood behind me, holding the gun, and putting his finger over my finger to show me how to squeeze the trigger "more slow" as he kept saying. The problem was he was 3 inches shorter than me and I have gorilla arms. So I had to kind of fold up my arms so he could reach the trigger. Out of 15 bullets only 4 hit the target at all, and only two were in the black. Everyone from my project was watching behind me in the theater and laughing. When I was finished I held my target up to the bullet proof glass so everyone could see how bad it was.


I would like to take this opportunity to mention that the Texas Kid is a damn good shot. He wanted a casing so I took off my sandals and picked one up with my toes. After I gave it to him I said "I picked that up with my foot" and he said "you are so disgusting". Then he went to the bathroom and washed his hands and the casing.


While driving home Texas Kid was still laughing about the Paki giving me a "shooting lesson". I was like dude, you're people are retarded and he said that the guy just really wanted to touch my hands because it's a big deal for a man to touch a woman's hands.

Which may or may not be true. It's the middle east, so it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't.

some pictures

The view straight out my window. This traffic circle is where I get killed almost every day while I'm walking to get groceries or my laundry. It's not too busy now. Imagine three rows of cars going around that circle, with everyone headed in a different direction and cutting off cars to take their exit.

Scary. The pic is looking out towards the meridien, about 6 miles away. Notice the haze in the air - that's sand blowing around in the air.

Everything is under construction in this country, even the exit ramp out of the Intercon. It makes life interesting.

This is the "sand bridge", built to the sand bar you see in front of the beach. Why did they build this sand bridge and fake sand island? So they could build stuff on it. What, I don't know. It's spoiled the beach and the view. Normally the sand island has tents set up on it for the construction workers doing what ever it is they are doing with the fake island.

This is the view of the beach. Those little umbrellas are the ones made out of palm fronds. You'll notice, hopefully, the wall that blocks this little water area off from the real ocean. The water in this blocked off area is about 20 feet at its deepest.

And that's how the water gets so hot. The sand from the fake sand island blow into our little water area too, which is annoying.

gun club

Apropos of nothing I could think of, one of the guys I work for today, in the middle of a meeting, asked me "Have you ever shot anyone?"

"Not that I know of" I responded jauntily. Too bad I didn't read my horoscope today before I answered. It was "unless you're with like-minded people, your dry wit will be misinterpreted". Seriously!

There was dead silence around the table, so I clarified that I was just joking.

For some reason everyone is getting nervous about going shooting with me on Friday. The guy who arranged the trip (the same one who asked if I had ever shot someone) has arranged for everyone to have private instructors. The club where we're going has seats above the range so people can watch while you're shooting. I've been forbidden to watch anyone until they fire "practice rounds". I was also told that the targets would not be moved past a certain distance (the distance is so close a blind person could hit it).

Funny that these guys thought they were going to intimidate me by taking me to a gun club, and they're all officers or retired officers, and now they are the ones intimidated. It's like when I invited them to go jet skiing (which we were supposed to do tomorrow). They were all enthusiastic but eventually every one of them came up with an excuse of why they couldn't go. I asked one of the Lebanese guys I work with if they were mad at me and he was like "dude, none of them know how to swim". Oh. Duh. But, wait a minute. They live on an ISLAND. I also pointed out we have to wear those floaty vests. He said "that's fine, until a shark eats you".

If there are any sharks in the water, they must be half cooked by now. It was 129 degrees today. The water temperature logged in at 118 degrees. Last night I walked a mile and a half to get my laundry, at 10 pm. It felt like someone was following behind me with a hair dryer, blasting me with hot air, assuming also that the hair dryer was full of sand (we're still in sand storm season). When I got home I had sand in my ears. Gross.

colloquial

I've been teaching my customer some colloquial expressions. Here's a story to illustrate. No, this really didn't happen to me today. Really. I mean, why wouldn't this story be made up because it couldn't happen on a real project...

The first expression is "thrown under the bus". For example, if my customer is having difficulties with someone else in his organization who is blocking our project, and tells me on Thursday he's going to have the guy fired, and I think he in the end agrees with me to just let things work their course, and then he calls the CEO on Friday and says "this guy should be fired and Franki agreed with me", I've been thrown under the bus.

The second expression is "blow back". The CEO calls a meeting with my customer and the offending party and says one will be fired. The offending party comes to me and says "why did you say we have trouble working together?" I try to explain that I never said that, with my customer present to verify. For the record, the offending party is VERY hard to work with, going so far as to suggest my company is at fault for a quirk of the XML standard and that I should find a way to fix it. Right. After the offending party leaves I look at my customer who is saying "oh, sorry, I didn't realize what I said would effect you". I ask why he would make something up at my expense and he said that my opinion has weight with the CEO. I point out to him that he didn't consider blow back.

The third expression is "molly coddle". So I have to spend the rest of my day with the offending party to assure him that I think he's just great. And people wonder why I have an ulcer. I'll be spending the rest of my evening doing my real work that I couldn't get done because of this unscheduled babysitting gig. When my customer asks why I was spending so much time with the offending party I pointed out that, because my customer is a knucklehead, I now have to molly coddle the offending party.

The fourth expression is "a rose between two thorns". The CEO called me into his office this afternoon and apologized for getting me caught in the middle of the political war between the offending party and my customer. I explained to him that I was a rose between two thorns (though, I am originally the rose between two different thorns, if you remember Mr. Krol). He then said "and I am the shield for the rose". Uh huh. He also said the offending party might indeed be fired but he's not sure. Meaning, I have to keep up the molly coddling even though at the end of the day it will all be for naught.

The fifth expression, which I haven't taught my customer yet, is cluster fuck.

Ech. This is why I have an ulcer.

Now, I'm off to work on my ITIL study guide. I am probably going to sit for the exam on Thursday because, yeah, I have nothing better to do.