I've developed a weird friendship with a local guy who works for the parent company of the company I'm consulting with. Well, he has a "job" there, but he doesn't really do any work. He's related to the sheik though, so he was given a position because he has a lot of wasta.
I'll call him Habib. He's a year older than me physically and about 25 years younger than me mentally. I first caught his attention in a meeting (he had only come in to the room to get some cookies but ended up staying). He said he was interested in me because of my hair. In fact, he once asked me to give him a lock of my hair. I told him to stop being stupid, and he got so mad at me he didn't talk to me for a few days.
Habib is interested in all things western. Even though he's super rich, he's barely done any traveling and has never been to the US. We started hanging out because I would show him pictures from my travels that I have up on the kodakgallery web site. He especially likes to look at pictures of my house (he's never seen a "real", that is not movie, house with brick walls or wood floors, shockingly) and asks endless questions like "where did you get that?" and "why do you have that picture on the wall?" I bet if someone broke into my house I could send him pictures and he would know as well as I do, or better, what was missing.
He used to call and invite me to meet him for dinner. At first the invitation was for a restaurant in my hotel, and the invitations kept escalating to fancier and fancier places. Finally a person at my customer site told me Habib thought I was turning down his invitations because he wasn't inviting me to a nice enough place. I had a long talk with Habib to explain that, even though we are friends, I'm not going to dinner with him alone because I don't want to get myself into some weird situation. He was mad at first but seems to be fine now.
He takes xanax every day. I asked him why and he said it's because he can't control his mind. He first became depressed when he was 14 because he watched a movie about a guy who couldn't sleep. That night, he suddenly thought that maybe he had the same disease as the guy in the movie. For six months he couldn't really eat or sleep. Finally he talked to his grandfather who said the disease in the movie wasn't real, and he was instantly better.
He got depressed again in his 20s. He met a woman that he really loved and they dated for 2 years. But he couldn't commit to marrying her because of his family (she was local but not from a prominent family). She ended up marrying her boss.
Habib then told his mom to arrange a marriage for him and he married his cousin (that's one of the few things he's said to me that actually shocked me - I was like "your cousin? your real cousin?" and he said "yes, she is the daughter of my mother's sister" - it's common to marry like that here which is why many of the locals end up with rare diseases). Although he has 4 kids the marriage, according to him, is unhappy because he hates his wife. He said that even on the first night of their honeymoon they fought (he called it a "hellmoon").
After getting married he woke up one day and thought "what is the worst thing I could ever do?" and suddenly the thought "F*k God" popped into his head. For the muslim culture this is the worst thing you could ever think. But then he started thinking it all the time and couldn't stop. He said he would be sitting in his car in traffic and inside he was screaming "F*k God" over and over again, thousands of times, and he couldn't stop.
He tried to become super religious in the hopes that would help. He began praying 10 times a day and studying the koran, fasting when it wasn't required, going to the mosque every evening, and he completely quit everything that is haram (he used to drink alcohol and smoke cigars). But that didn't help either.
So he went to a doctor and said that he was having trouble sleeping. The doctor has, over the years, given him various medications but none seemed to help. Habib did some research on line and finally decided he needed xanax. So he made up some fake symptoms that didn't make him seem crazy and the doctor gave him the prescription. He said the drug helps him "not think about things I shouldn't think about".
After taking xanax and getting un-depressed he decided that being super religious was a waste of time. He doesn't pray or go to the mosque anymore except for special occasions. He drinks alcohol and smokes cigars. But sometimes he gets anxious that he is going to hell. I keep reminding him that the koran doesn't say that alcohol and smoking are forbidden. Sometimes he asks me if I think God likes him. I used to say "I don't know". Then he would say "well if you were God would you like me?" I used to think this was a backhanded way to get me to say that I liked him, but then realized he was being serious. So now when he asks me I pause, and then say "when you asked me that question I just had a feeling that God was telling me to tell you that he likes you". This makes Habib very happy although it's crazy, really.
He was thinking to divorce his wife when we met. I suggested marriage counseling and he looked at me like I had suggested he run naked through the streets. He said "we don't do THAT here". I gave him the names of some books he could read but he is too afraid to buy them even on amazon for fear someone will find out. Then I suggested he just marry a new wife that he likes. So he's been asking my opinion of some potential candidates for his second wife. All of them are very young (some not even 20) and sound just as lost as he is.
I've introduced him to rap music, jazz, the word "angst", and some of my favorite bad word expressions. I also translate western culture for him. The other day he was reading a gossip magazine (he reads Hello magazine while he's getting his manicure and pedicure, but he would never have that magazine in his house or lower himself to buy it) and he called me up to ask me "when the magazine says these two people are dating, what does that mean? are they having sex? do they live in the same house?" He also read an article somewhere about women getting raped in the US; part of the article mentioned a woman who went to a bar, got drunk, went home with a strange man, and got raped. He was surprised that the man was charged. Then he wanted to know, in detail, what happens exactly when a rape occurs, how it's proven that the woman was raped, what the legal proceeding is for handling rape, and how much time men spend in jail for rape. Here 4 men have to witness the rape for the woman to get any justice and because of the huge social stigma even if men witness a rape they will rarely report it.
He watched the sex in the city movie, and that sparked a whole other series of conversations. He wanted to know if gay people really have weddings in the US. He asked me (and I assume this is from something in the movie, which I haven't seen) "do women in the US really visit each other and talk about their vaginas?" And: "I'm not ever going to recycle because recycling was invented by gay people and I don't want people to think I'm gay". I pointed out to him that I recycle almost all of my trash (except here because they don't recycle) and that I'm not gay. His response: "well, that's because you try to be nice to everyone, even gay people".
Habib left yesterday to go on holidays in Jordan (he wanted to go after looking at my pictures). He's getting depressed that I'll be leaving soon and he wants to come visit me in the US. His idea is to come to the US, learn how to swim (again, I'm shocked at how few people here can swim - I've told him to take lessons but all he ever wants to do is have me demonstrate how I move my arms and legs when I swim - then he spends 5 or 10 minutes doggy paddling in the air, which he thinks is going to help him if he ever ends up in the water) and to "go to the rocky mountain" (I've stopped correcting his perception that there is one giant mountain that takes up the whole state of Colorado). I pointed out to him that he has to get into shape to go hiking and he told me "I'll just take a donkey up". I told him there are no donkeys to take people up the mountains and he said "well I will buy a donkey and then ride it up the rocky mountain".
I'm going to miss talking to Habib while he is on vacation, although I've already gotten 10 text messages from him complaining about various things that have happened on his trip (the airport in Amman smelled bad, he can't find a KFC which is his favorite place to eat, his driver is egyptian, the hotel put the room for his kids and wife right next to his room so they are driving him crazy, etc.). I have to admit I'll probably miss him when I go home as well. I never thought I'd be friends with a local, and he comes up with so many crazy things he makes me feel that I'm actually normal.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
"don't use this slope" (part 3)
The audio is a little clearer on this one, at least for the most important line...
And Carol is pointing out that I've really wrecked the bumper on the truck.
We're finally unstuck!
And Carol is pointing out that I've really wrecked the bumper on the truck.
We're finally unstuck!
"famous stucks" (part 2)
Ib gives a lesson on how to unstick a stuck truck (this film shows the depth more clearly than the pics). I'm sitting with Carol on the dune above, and we're laughing as they try to rescue the car from the sand pit.
Because the audio isn't completely clear...the trip leader says "yanni (which is like saying um) this is one of the famous stucks (something in arabic)," trying to make me feel like it was the worst stuck that's ever happened on the trip (of course, other stucks later in the night were much worse) and you can hear the other drivers sitting with me on the sand dune clapping. Carol says "oh you did such a good job" and then I say "yeeeah" like an idiot. Someone else says "you must be proud" and I say "I am". Then Ib says "give you a lesson. I always made this (basically saying he told me to drive like that because other people were making fun of him for being my "coach" and causing me to wreck the car) to give you a lesson on this kind of stucks and how to get out of them. Thank you so much Franki". There was a momentary pause in the rescue because not enough tires were on the sand because the pit I had landed in was so steep.
Because the audio isn't completely clear...the trip leader says "yanni (which is like saying um) this is one of the famous stucks (something in arabic)," trying to make me feel like it was the worst stuck that's ever happened on the trip (of course, other stucks later in the night were much worse) and you can hear the other drivers sitting with me on the sand dune clapping. Carol says "oh you did such a good job" and then I say "yeeeah" like an idiot. Someone else says "you must be proud" and I say "I am". Then Ib says "give you a lesson. I always made this (basically saying he told me to drive like that because other people were making fun of him for being my "coach" and causing me to wreck the car) to give you a lesson on this kind of stucks and how to get out of them. Thank you so much Franki". There was a momentary pause in the rescue because not enough tires were on the sand because the pit I had landed in was so steep.
blonde bashing (part 1)
You have to admire a company that wants me to come work for them so badly one of their executives let me almost wreck his car last night. Go ahead and say it - "women drivers".
But, in my defense, it wasn't my fault. After happy hours and dinners, the company decided to take me on an adventure in the hopes I might want to stay here. I met up with Ib, a guy I met through work whom I've become friends with, at 6 PM last night. He's an explorer in an off roading club in dhabi. There were 12 other people on the trip.
Off roading is very dangerous here, so the club has "ranks" of drivers. New drivers have no rank. Someone who's been driving for 6 months on "newbie" trips gets one star. The star system goes up to 4 stars (the stars dictate which trips you can go on). Experts can become explorers, meaning they find new trails. The trails are sort of marked on a gps system, but since the dunes change on a daily basis, the route isn't always clear.
Ib is an explorer. He's been driving for 6 years and he goes at least twice a week. He told me the trip would be done at 10. I figured I would be back to the hotel by 11 pm.
We started out by getting the car ready for offroading. Ib said "don't expect to be treated like a princess". I got out of the car in the 133 degree heat and helped uninflate tires at the edge of a road leading into the desert. Then we were supposed to put up a flag so drivers could see us when we were down in a dune so they wouldn't fly over the dune and hit us. But, Ib didn't have a flag. "How dangerous could this be though?" I thought to myself. Ib's 8 year old daughter's stuffed pink cat was in the car because she sometimes goes with him.
I was about to find out the answer to my question.
We started out on some mellow terrain. It took a bit of getting used to at first. You drive sideways across a dune, like a surfer surfing a wave. The car is constantly sliding down the dune and feels like it is about to turn over. People roll, but usually the sand is so soft that it's hard to roll the car unless you do something really stupid.
Night started falling and we were deep in the desert. We stopped at the top of a wide dune as the moon, which was barely a crescent, came out. We got out of the car and set up some chairs, and the group sat around and had tea and smoked either cigars or cigarettes. "What are we waiting for?" I asked Ib. "Complete darkness," he replied.
Once it was totally dark, Ib handed me the keys to his car. "We're going for a drive," he said. The rest of the group looked as surprised as I did. "But I don't know how to drive in the sand," I said. There was another female in the group, Carol, who's french and looks like a model. She's been driving for four years and is an explorer too. She had been telling me how long it took her to get the confidence to drive on easy stuff. And here I was, in the middle of some serious terrain.
Oh well, f*k it, I thought. I took the keys. My first maneuver involved getting the car out of the way of the other 8 cars parked on the dune. Ib's car was facing downhill on a steep sand slope. There was a car parked sideways in front of me. I had to roll 2 feet to get past the car next to me, and then execute a sharp turn to get around the car in front of me, without sliding into it. I managed to do that but was less than 6 inches from the car in front of me by the time I made my turn. Scary.
Then I made my first foray onto the side of a dune. You have to fight every driving instinct to do this. The car is sliding sideways as you are driving forward and you have to fine tune your pressure on the gas pedal to make sure you are gunning it on the more solid sand and easing off on the softer sand so you don't dig a hole. If the car decides to slide down you have to let it go and then figure out how to get out of the sand ditch. I got about 5 feet onto the dune and the car started to slide. Instead of turning the wheel down I tried to drive up more on the dune and then I hit some soft sand. We were getting stuck. I gunned the engine and all this sand flew off the front tire and into Ib's window. His face was covered with sand because he was sweating. I laughed and got stuck.
Ib tried to get us out, but couldn't. The jeep with the winch came and pulled us out. I thought that would be it for my driving, but Ib wanted me to keep going. He also said "just call me the sandman" because he was so covered in sand (the sand flying through the windows happened constantly the rest of the night because we drove with the windows wide open so we didn't have to have the air con on - what's the point of being in the desert if you aren't experiencing the desert fully?).
My second attempt went really well. I decided to treat the car like a boat and steering became easier, except that Ib said I was taking too tight turns, which can cause the tire, which is deflated, to come off its rim (called a pop out). He also said I should slow down coming over the top of a sand dune since you have to see what's on the down side.
But I was so afraid of getting stuck that it was hard to break coming over the top of a sand dune (that's one of the worst places to be stuck because it's hard to move the car with one set of wheels on one side of the dune, and the other set on the other side). The dunes rise up sharply like a shark fin. The last 2 or 3 feet are normally soft, baby powder textured sand. If you get stuck in that mess you can't drive out of it. So I kept flying over the dunes. Anyway, it was so dark, with no moon, I normally couldn't see where I was going anyway.
Then disaster struck. I went flying over a dune with the gas pedal to the floor because I had been zig zagging up a very soft dune. Ib was encouraging me, psyched I was able to drive up the dune. We came over the top, and for a moment it felt like the car had stopped. Then I realized we weren't stopped, we were falling.
The side we had come down on was super steep. There was a soft sand powder hole at the bottom of the dune and we landed smack in the middle of it. We hit so hard I ended up with a bruise from my seat belt (note in the picture there are NO tire marks behind the car).
I heard the rest of the club, who had been watching me drive from another dune cheering. One egyptian guy yelled out "Franki went flying!" The car had made a horrible noise when it landed. I thought Ib was going to kill me.
Instead he laughed and said "Your first stuck!" It took 15 minutes of winching to get the truck out of the sand pit. Ib laid under the front tire to show how high up it was off the ground. Then the club told me to sit under the tire so they could take a picture for their web site. These pictures so just how soft the sand is here. The back of the truck buried on impact. The front left tire was buried (I also damaged the bumper) but the right tire was really high off the ground.
After we got the car unstuck Ib decided that was enough of me driving. We took off further and further into the desert. Soon other people were getting stuck, so I didn't feel so bad.
Some of the group decided to go home at 10, but I wanted to keep going. The terrain was getting more and more treacherous. At times Ib just let the car slide where ever it wanted to go. Other times we would fly over a dune and hit hard on the other side after flying through the air.
We stopped in a spot between the dunes around 11 pm. Everyone got out and we had dates and tea. Ib and I talked about work, life in general, camels, and then farting. He was telling me about how he had stopped hanging out with some of his friends because they were always having farting contests. He also said they sell this thing in his home country of Jordan that's like a stink bomb, and he used to throw them in his classroom because they would have to cancel class for at least two days because none of the lady teachers could stand the smell. I told him to bring some into the office (he and his family were heading to Jordan today for two weeks holiday) so we could get out of work. He laughed and said he didn't want his sons to know that these things existed because they might throw them in the house (they are 7 and 8 and apparently very badly behaved).
Around 1230 am we started to head home. That's when the trip turned into an epic. First we got a little lost and ended up on a soft dune. Everyone kept getting stuck. The only way out was to drive down this narrow corridor. As we headed towards the corridor Carol, who was in front of us, slammed on her brakes. In front of her was a newly constructed fence. She almost hit it, and then we almost hit her. Our cars were so close they couldn't winch Carol out because we were in the way. The guys in the group managed to push her out of the hole she had dug spinning her tires trying to not hit the fence. We then tried to back up the dune but the car slid forward into the fence.
About 20 guys came riding up on ATVs and started yelling in Arabic. Apparently a camel preserve had just put up the fence and they were yelling at us for being to close to the preserve. They yelled at Ib as he tried in vain to unstick the truck. His clutch was burning so bad that it smelled for the rest of the drive, but he couldn't move his car.
Finally the camel guys agreed to lower the fence so we could drive over it. We gunned up a dune while the camel guys screamed at us to not hit the camels. Then we got out and over the dune.
But a few minutes later the leader of our trip hit the fence in a new place. It took 15 minutes to get him unstuck and instead of being nice like Ib, he just cut the fence. Then another driver got stuck in the same place and had a pop out. While we tried to jack up his truck and fix the problem (which was not easy because the pop out tire was on the downside of the dune slope) the camel guys came over and started screaming that we would be arrested for ruining their fence. I was like great. It's 130 in the morning. I was tired, really dirty, and hot. I hadn't eaten anything since 11 in the morning so I was hungry but afraid to eat because I knew I would puke from all the spinning moves we were doing in the truck. And now we're going to jail, I thought.
But, Ib talked to the guys and in the end they let us go. We got the pop out fixed and Ib assured me we were only 10 km from the road and that we would be heading home shortly.
Then two more people got stuck. And Ib flew over a dune and landed in a sand pit. He had to be winched twice to get out of it and we thought for a few minutes we were going to have to leave the car because the position it was in made it so hard to pull out. The leader was the final stuck, ending up in a sand pit so deep that when the winch pulled him out we all had to move in case the cable broke and went flying.
Finally, at 4 am, we arrived at a gas station to reinflate the tires. Ib's car was first, but it took so long for the guy to fill the tires that it seemed he could do it faster by manually blowing into the valve. Ib was making fun of me because I was covered head to toe in sand and sweat. As Carol and I walked across the parking lot of the filling station to look at the damage she had done to her jeep from a stuck I left a trail of sand.
Ib dropped me off at the hotel at 530 in the morning. The intercon staff looked at me curiously as I made another sand trail through the lobby. I had blood on my feet from scratching them while I was trying to help unstick the truck barefoot. My shirt and pants were covered in dust. My hair was flying in a million different directions from driving in the heat with the windows open.
After showering I finally was able to lay down and shut my eyes. But right before I fell asleep I remembered the words of the trip leader: "so, next ride you will have your own jeep?"
Ha ha, I wish. No, I'd rather wreck someone else's.
But, in my defense, it wasn't my fault. After happy hours and dinners, the company decided to take me on an adventure in the hopes I might want to stay here. I met up with Ib, a guy I met through work whom I've become friends with, at 6 PM last night. He's an explorer in an off roading club in dhabi. There were 12 other people on the trip.
Off roading is very dangerous here, so the club has "ranks" of drivers. New drivers have no rank. Someone who's been driving for 6 months on "newbie" trips gets one star. The star system goes up to 4 stars (the stars dictate which trips you can go on). Experts can become explorers, meaning they find new trails. The trails are sort of marked on a gps system, but since the dunes change on a daily basis, the route isn't always clear.
Ib is an explorer. He's been driving for 6 years and he goes at least twice a week. He told me the trip would be done at 10. I figured I would be back to the hotel by 11 pm.
We started out by getting the car ready for offroading. Ib said "don't expect to be treated like a princess". I got out of the car in the 133 degree heat and helped uninflate tires at the edge of a road leading into the desert. Then we were supposed to put up a flag so drivers could see us when we were down in a dune so they wouldn't fly over the dune and hit us. But, Ib didn't have a flag. "How dangerous could this be though?" I thought to myself. Ib's 8 year old daughter's stuffed pink cat was in the car because she sometimes goes with him.
I was about to find out the answer to my question.
We started out on some mellow terrain. It took a bit of getting used to at first. You drive sideways across a dune, like a surfer surfing a wave. The car is constantly sliding down the dune and feels like it is about to turn over. People roll, but usually the sand is so soft that it's hard to roll the car unless you do something really stupid.
Night started falling and we were deep in the desert. We stopped at the top of a wide dune as the moon, which was barely a crescent, came out. We got out of the car and set up some chairs, and the group sat around and had tea and smoked either cigars or cigarettes. "What are we waiting for?" I asked Ib. "Complete darkness," he replied.
Once it was totally dark, Ib handed me the keys to his car. "We're going for a drive," he said. The rest of the group looked as surprised as I did. "But I don't know how to drive in the sand," I said. There was another female in the group, Carol, who's french and looks like a model. She's been driving for four years and is an explorer too. She had been telling me how long it took her to get the confidence to drive on easy stuff. And here I was, in the middle of some serious terrain.
Oh well, f*k it, I thought. I took the keys. My first maneuver involved getting the car out of the way of the other 8 cars parked on the dune. Ib's car was facing downhill on a steep sand slope. There was a car parked sideways in front of me. I had to roll 2 feet to get past the car next to me, and then execute a sharp turn to get around the car in front of me, without sliding into it. I managed to do that but was less than 6 inches from the car in front of me by the time I made my turn. Scary.
Then I made my first foray onto the side of a dune. You have to fight every driving instinct to do this. The car is sliding sideways as you are driving forward and you have to fine tune your pressure on the gas pedal to make sure you are gunning it on the more solid sand and easing off on the softer sand so you don't dig a hole. If the car decides to slide down you have to let it go and then figure out how to get out of the sand ditch. I got about 5 feet onto the dune and the car started to slide. Instead of turning the wheel down I tried to drive up more on the dune and then I hit some soft sand. We were getting stuck. I gunned the engine and all this sand flew off the front tire and into Ib's window. His face was covered with sand because he was sweating. I laughed and got stuck.
Ib tried to get us out, but couldn't. The jeep with the winch came and pulled us out. I thought that would be it for my driving, but Ib wanted me to keep going. He also said "just call me the sandman" because he was so covered in sand (the sand flying through the windows happened constantly the rest of the night because we drove with the windows wide open so we didn't have to have the air con on - what's the point of being in the desert if you aren't experiencing the desert fully?).
My second attempt went really well. I decided to treat the car like a boat and steering became easier, except that Ib said I was taking too tight turns, which can cause the tire, which is deflated, to come off its rim (called a pop out). He also said I should slow down coming over the top of a sand dune since you have to see what's on the down side.
But I was so afraid of getting stuck that it was hard to break coming over the top of a sand dune (that's one of the worst places to be stuck because it's hard to move the car with one set of wheels on one side of the dune, and the other set on the other side). The dunes rise up sharply like a shark fin. The last 2 or 3 feet are normally soft, baby powder textured sand. If you get stuck in that mess you can't drive out of it. So I kept flying over the dunes. Anyway, it was so dark, with no moon, I normally couldn't see where I was going anyway.
Then disaster struck. I went flying over a dune with the gas pedal to the floor because I had been zig zagging up a very soft dune. Ib was encouraging me, psyched I was able to drive up the dune. We came over the top, and for a moment it felt like the car had stopped. Then I realized we weren't stopped, we were falling.
The side we had come down on was super steep. There was a soft sand powder hole at the bottom of the dune and we landed smack in the middle of it. We hit so hard I ended up with a bruise from my seat belt (note in the picture there are NO tire marks behind the car).I heard the rest of the club, who had been watching me drive from another dune cheering. One egyptian guy yelled out "Franki went flying!" The car had made a horrible noise when it landed. I thought Ib was going to kill me.
Instead he laughed and said "Your first stuck!" It took 15 minutes of winching to get the truck out of the sand pit. Ib laid under the front tire to show how high up it was off the ground. Then the club told me to sit under the tire so they could take a picture for their web site. These pictures so just how soft the sand is here. The back of the truck buried on impact. The front left tire was buried (I also damaged the bumper) but the right tire was really high off the ground.
Some of the group decided to go home at 10, but I wanted to keep going. The terrain was getting more and more treacherous. At times Ib just let the car slide where ever it wanted to go. Other times we would fly over a dune and hit hard on the other side after flying through the air.
We stopped in a spot between the dunes around 11 pm. Everyone got out and we had dates and tea. Ib and I talked about work, life in general, camels, and then farting. He was telling me about how he had stopped hanging out with some of his friends because they were always having farting contests. He also said they sell this thing in his home country of Jordan that's like a stink bomb, and he used to throw them in his classroom because they would have to cancel class for at least two days because none of the lady teachers could stand the smell. I told him to bring some into the office (he and his family were heading to Jordan today for two weeks holiday) so we could get out of work. He laughed and said he didn't want his sons to know that these things existed because they might throw them in the house (they are 7 and 8 and apparently very badly behaved).
Around 1230 am we started to head home. That's when the trip turned into an epic. First we got a little lost and ended up on a soft dune. Everyone kept getting stuck. The only way out was to drive down this narrow corridor. As we headed towards the corridor Carol, who was in front of us, slammed on her brakes. In front of her was a newly constructed fence. She almost hit it, and then we almost hit her. Our cars were so close they couldn't winch Carol out because we were in the way. The guys in the group managed to push her out of the hole she had dug spinning her tires trying to not hit the fence. We then tried to back up the dune but the car slid forward into the fence.
About 20 guys came riding up on ATVs and started yelling in Arabic. Apparently a camel preserve had just put up the fence and they were yelling at us for being to close to the preserve. They yelled at Ib as he tried in vain to unstick the truck. His clutch was burning so bad that it smelled for the rest of the drive, but he couldn't move his car.
Finally the camel guys agreed to lower the fence so we could drive over it. We gunned up a dune while the camel guys screamed at us to not hit the camels. Then we got out and over the dune.
But a few minutes later the leader of our trip hit the fence in a new place. It took 15 minutes to get him unstuck and instead of being nice like Ib, he just cut the fence. Then another driver got stuck in the same place and had a pop out. While we tried to jack up his truck and fix the problem (which was not easy because the pop out tire was on the downside of the dune slope) the camel guys came over and started screaming that we would be arrested for ruining their fence. I was like great. It's 130 in the morning. I was tired, really dirty, and hot. I hadn't eaten anything since 11 in the morning so I was hungry but afraid to eat because I knew I would puke from all the spinning moves we were doing in the truck. And now we're going to jail, I thought.
But, Ib talked to the guys and in the end they let us go. We got the pop out fixed and Ib assured me we were only 10 km from the road and that we would be heading home shortly.
Then two more people got stuck. And Ib flew over a dune and landed in a sand pit. He had to be winched twice to get out of it and we thought for a few minutes we were going to have to leave the car because the position it was in made it so hard to pull out. The leader was the final stuck, ending up in a sand pit so deep that when the winch pulled him out we all had to move in case the cable broke and went flying.
Finally, at 4 am, we arrived at a gas station to reinflate the tires. Ib's car was first, but it took so long for the guy to fill the tires that it seemed he could do it faster by manually blowing into the valve. Ib was making fun of me because I was covered head to toe in sand and sweat. As Carol and I walked across the parking lot of the filling station to look at the damage she had done to her jeep from a stuck I left a trail of sand.
Ib dropped me off at the hotel at 530 in the morning. The intercon staff looked at me curiously as I made another sand trail through the lobby. I had blood on my feet from scratching them while I was trying to help unstick the truck barefoot. My shirt and pants were covered in dust. My hair was flying in a million different directions from driving in the heat with the windows open.
After showering I finally was able to lay down and shut my eyes. But right before I fell asleep I remembered the words of the trip leader: "so, next ride you will have your own jeep?"
Ha ha, I wish. No, I'd rather wreck someone else's.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
the problem child and I become friends
Poor problem child. He has such a short memory. He skulked around me for a few days, but then was behaving badly in meetings all day today. I've dealt with it as well as possible. Today when he kept interrupting my data modeling session, I let him pick where we would start modeling. When he had technical difficulties with his laptop I got the IT kid to come fix it immediately.
In a way, I guess I'm just resigned to his personality. There's one problem child on every project, at various levels of being bad. And normally I get along with difficult personalities.
But things took a turn for the worst today when I was trying to draw a strategy map. Problem child said my map was wrong (it wasn't) and proceeded to lecture me for thirty minutes on what a strategy is. Nothing he said was making any sense. So, a local who briefly owned my project before foisting it onto someone else who was in the meeting started to pick on the problem child. First he played a trick to get the problem child, who sometimes gets confused with the english language when he's in an argument, to say he was totally incompetent at defining strategies. The problem child finally realized what was going on after he had said "I am totally incompetent at defining strategies" 14, yes, 14 times. I felt bad for him because he didn't look pissed, like I would be, he looked hurt. Then the local said that the problem child was a bad communicator. And then he said that if people at the company were confused by the strategy map it was because the problem child didn't know what he was doing.
In all honesty, I think the local was doing this because we have a good work friendship and he knows the problem child picks on me. But, I fight my own fights. And when I say stuff to the problem child he doesn't care - I'm just a woman. When a man does it, the sole reason is humiliation.
As the local escalated his barrage, and the problem child looked more and more pathetic, standing in the front of the room, pants belted and pulled up past his belly button, socks showing a full inch because his pants are too short, his weirdly spindly shoulders curving more and more inward, and his giant gut protruding like a target that screamed "hit me!", I couldn't take it anymore. I turned to the local, who was sitting next to me, and said "stop it". I didn't say it loud, or in a mean way, but it shut down all of the noise in the room (there were about 7 people arguing at the same time in the meeting).
I suggested that I meet with the problem child alone to combine both of our thoughts on strategies. I suggested we meet again next week. Everyone was glad the meeting was finally over so no one argued and they ran out of the room like school kids finally released for the summer holidays.
Except the problem child. He came over to me and said, after he had gotten the email I sent him yesterday thanking him for acknowledging my team's good work on the project, that he was sorry he hadn't said more often how pleased he was with the job we have been doing. And then he said " I expect so much from you because of the work you do that sometimes I forget to say thank you." But, I really think he was thanking me for defending him in the meeting.
I take that as a truce. Somehow maybe I have some wasta here, not with powerful people, but with the ground troops. And regardless of what pains in the ass they can be, I guess I'll survive my last 4 weeks here. Even the local, whom I thought would be pissed at me, came up to me as I was leaving work this evening and said "you have to be the most diplomatic person I've ever met".
Okay, I know you're laughing now. But I swear he said it.
In a way, I guess I'm just resigned to his personality. There's one problem child on every project, at various levels of being bad. And normally I get along with difficult personalities.
But things took a turn for the worst today when I was trying to draw a strategy map. Problem child said my map was wrong (it wasn't) and proceeded to lecture me for thirty minutes on what a strategy is. Nothing he said was making any sense. So, a local who briefly owned my project before foisting it onto someone else who was in the meeting started to pick on the problem child. First he played a trick to get the problem child, who sometimes gets confused with the english language when he's in an argument, to say he was totally incompetent at defining strategies. The problem child finally realized what was going on after he had said "I am totally incompetent at defining strategies" 14, yes, 14 times. I felt bad for him because he didn't look pissed, like I would be, he looked hurt. Then the local said that the problem child was a bad communicator. And then he said that if people at the company were confused by the strategy map it was because the problem child didn't know what he was doing.
In all honesty, I think the local was doing this because we have a good work friendship and he knows the problem child picks on me. But, I fight my own fights. And when I say stuff to the problem child he doesn't care - I'm just a woman. When a man does it, the sole reason is humiliation.
As the local escalated his barrage, and the problem child looked more and more pathetic, standing in the front of the room, pants belted and pulled up past his belly button, socks showing a full inch because his pants are too short, his weirdly spindly shoulders curving more and more inward, and his giant gut protruding like a target that screamed "hit me!", I couldn't take it anymore. I turned to the local, who was sitting next to me, and said "stop it". I didn't say it loud, or in a mean way, but it shut down all of the noise in the room (there were about 7 people arguing at the same time in the meeting).
I suggested that I meet with the problem child alone to combine both of our thoughts on strategies. I suggested we meet again next week. Everyone was glad the meeting was finally over so no one argued and they ran out of the room like school kids finally released for the summer holidays.
Except the problem child. He came over to me and said, after he had gotten the email I sent him yesterday thanking him for acknowledging my team's good work on the project, that he was sorry he hadn't said more often how pleased he was with the job we have been doing. And then he said " I expect so much from you because of the work you do that sometimes I forget to say thank you." But, I really think he was thanking me for defending him in the meeting.
I take that as a truce. Somehow maybe I have some wasta here, not with powerful people, but with the ground troops. And regardless of what pains in the ass they can be, I guess I'll survive my last 4 weeks here. Even the local, whom I thought would be pissed at me, came up to me as I was leaving work this evening and said "you have to be the most diplomatic person I've ever met".
Okay, I know you're laughing now. But I swear he said it.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
bad interviews and polar bears
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/interviewees
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/polar_bear
Good for a few laughs. I would be the underdressed one...thanks for sending this Jason!
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/polar_bear
Good for a few laughs. I would be the underdressed one...thanks for sending this Jason!
a little dirty, but we've risen from the ashes
I went into work on Sunday with a plan in place to try to fix my project problems. I found out that, over the weekend, a decision had been made to put the problem child in charge of my project. I was absolutely furious, so much so that I temporarily couldn't finish reading the email because my sight went blank. As if I was going to work with that asshole. I decided to pull out all of the stops.
First, I went to the COO and gave him the status of the project. I casually mentioned we will finish all of the deliverables by the end of July, so there was no reason really for me to stick around until the 14th as is currently planned. I also said I was not happy with the problem child H delaying things, and that, since I have projects back in the US, and since he finds it so hard to work with me, it might be better for me to leave at the end of July.
I have to admit I was hoping he would say fine, get the hell out of here. But instead he asked who I wanted to run the project from the customer side. I suggested a guy, R, whom I get along with (even though he's canadian and all canadians are strange).
Within an hour, the change was made (much to the panic of R). Then the problem child decided to retaliate by blocking all forward progress on a web site that needs to be published by the end of the week. The problem child was told by the COO to have it done, and problem child said that I did not provide him with the data he needed and that he couldn't proceed any further.
To this point I have managed my temper and let things slide because working here is such a political mine field. But to suggest I did not do my job was about the worst thing problem child could do. I fired off an email that was so strongly worded one of my colleagues later said he could imagine me screaming every word in problem child's face.
I guess the thing is, the real work is done. I don't care if they throw me out of here because I stepped on someone's toes.
Within 10 minutes of sending the email I could hear a commotion on the floor below me as problem child was slapped down by the COO loudly and publicly. The COO accused him of lying which is funny because everyone lies here and no one says anything because it's just the way the culture works. I wondered what would happen next.
What happened is that the problem child has been avoiding me. Why? Because he's afraid of me now. Before he would waste my time having pointless arguments. Not any more. When he speaks to me, he does it calmly and actually seems a little timid. He carefully phrases everything so I don't take it the wrong way and fly off the handle again. And finally, our web site will be published.
To make sure there were no further issues that would get him in trouble, problem child sent me an email today saying I had done an excellent job. Which is so ironic since he was always my biggest critic. I responded back to him that it really meant a lot to me that he would say such nice things about my work. Hopefully things will continue in this "we all love each other so much" mode until I can get the hell out of here.
As for the web site, we publish tomorrow. I have a plan to make it more exciting than the launch of a NASA space shuttle. I'm even going to play the rocky theme song once it gets moved to sharepoint and the test user is able to access it. Even the IT guys, who, well, are IT guys, are getting excited about it (they have to publish it and they were complaining about the extra work, so I've been dealing with them as well as the problem child which has been making me insane because I've set up the web site so that all they have to do is push a button to get it to publish).
All ends well. At least for today.
First, I went to the COO and gave him the status of the project. I casually mentioned we will finish all of the deliverables by the end of July, so there was no reason really for me to stick around until the 14th as is currently planned. I also said I was not happy with the problem child H delaying things, and that, since I have projects back in the US, and since he finds it so hard to work with me, it might be better for me to leave at the end of July.
I have to admit I was hoping he would say fine, get the hell out of here. But instead he asked who I wanted to run the project from the customer side. I suggested a guy, R, whom I get along with (even though he's canadian and all canadians are strange).
Within an hour, the change was made (much to the panic of R). Then the problem child decided to retaliate by blocking all forward progress on a web site that needs to be published by the end of the week. The problem child was told by the COO to have it done, and problem child said that I did not provide him with the data he needed and that he couldn't proceed any further.
To this point I have managed my temper and let things slide because working here is such a political mine field. But to suggest I did not do my job was about the worst thing problem child could do. I fired off an email that was so strongly worded one of my colleagues later said he could imagine me screaming every word in problem child's face.
I guess the thing is, the real work is done. I don't care if they throw me out of here because I stepped on someone's toes.
Within 10 minutes of sending the email I could hear a commotion on the floor below me as problem child was slapped down by the COO loudly and publicly. The COO accused him of lying which is funny because everyone lies here and no one says anything because it's just the way the culture works. I wondered what would happen next.
What happened is that the problem child has been avoiding me. Why? Because he's afraid of me now. Before he would waste my time having pointless arguments. Not any more. When he speaks to me, he does it calmly and actually seems a little timid. He carefully phrases everything so I don't take it the wrong way and fly off the handle again. And finally, our web site will be published.
To make sure there were no further issues that would get him in trouble, problem child sent me an email today saying I had done an excellent job. Which is so ironic since he was always my biggest critic. I responded back to him that it really meant a lot to me that he would say such nice things about my work. Hopefully things will continue in this "we all love each other so much" mode until I can get the hell out of here.
As for the web site, we publish tomorrow. I have a plan to make it more exciting than the launch of a NASA space shuttle. I'm even going to play the rocky theme song once it gets moved to sharepoint and the test user is able to access it. Even the IT guys, who, well, are IT guys, are getting excited about it (they have to publish it and they were complaining about the extra work, so I've been dealing with them as well as the problem child which has been making me insane because I've set up the web site so that all they have to do is push a button to get it to publish).
All ends well. At least for today.
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