The Swedish get down

That's for sure. Went to this Swedish guy's birthday party the other night on the roof of Doug and Rachel's place and it was a blast. It was about 68 degrees with cold brews and good food. Notice the novel use of the broken hot tub. Beautiful. And I tell you what--European people by and large are just laid back cool as hell people. They just want to have a good time, and that's fine with me. Not like the American Navy dudes that just want to get drunk and tear shit apart. As long as you can get over (in this case) the heavy German accent you'll enjoy hanging out with these people...

YMCA

Yeah buddy. These are the guys at Johnny Rockets gettin' down. Good video. Shot this video this afternoon. Reason number 178 why I love this place...

Insert 25 cents--I mean 100 fils

Have a good look at this tabletop jukebox at Johnny Rockets. Then have a closer look at where you deposit the money. 100 fils. Nice. I guess that's about equal to 25 cents, so it makes sense. And since I'm posting these pictures, I'm going to go on a little Johnny Rockets rant. IT IS THE BEST AMERICAN RESTAURANT ON THE ISLAND. It is spot on to home. And I mean spot on. The entire restaurant has been imported from the states, right down to the thermostat which reads in Fahrenheit. The salt shakers, the ash trays, the sugar packets all read MADE IN THE US. Fucking awesome. Even the food is imported from the states, so the burgers taste like burgers back home which is a rarity on this island. Now this is a chain restaurant, I know because we have one in Columbus. And whoever owns this company DOES NOT let them deviate from what they do in the states. All the other American chains like Burger King, Papa Johns, Applebees, Chilis, McDonalds, Subway, etc all taste and feel slightly different from home. They use local ingredients which in my opinion changes the way the food tastes. Sure, it's Heintz ketchup but it has Arabic on the bottle, was made in Egypt, and tastes a bit vinegary. The ketchup at Rockets is Heintz as well, but there is no Arabic on the bottle and it was packaged in Pennsylvania. Awesome. There are only a few minute differences at Rockets and those are pretty much unavoidable. Firstly, the bacon is beef. There isn't any way around that. The waiter said the ministry wouldn't allow them to open if they served pork. The second was the jukebox, but it makes sense to change it to local currency. And the third were the waiters--they are all Filipino, but that is near unavoidable in this country as well.

Our second home...

Josh more so than I. But between the two of us we have spent a considerable amount of time at this place. And, might I add, IHB is a much better place than Ashtabula County Medical Center. It's a shame when a third world country produces better hospitals than the ones you went to growing up in the most powerful country in the world.

Burka Billboards

Check out this sign. You may have to click the photo to get the full effect. I've been meaning to score a photo of one of these shops for quite some time and finally got one. Don't forget to check out the ninja on the sign just below the 10 foot tall bitch in a burka...

Nate Dogg, this one's for you

About as close as you can get to your last name, buddy. Josh and I found this at a Italian joint yesterday. Thought you might like to see it...

What the fuck?

I've heard of these, but hadn't actually seen one until yesterday. This is a eastern toilet--which is nothing more than a hole in the floor. Literally. I stumbled across this when I needed to use the restroom at a gas station. Jesus. You think the restrooms are bad in the states at gas stations? Come out here and try to use a Speedway pisser, you'll be in for quite a shock...

Do not pass go

This is a road not too far from the boat docks. I like it. Notice the skid marks where people slammed on the brakes when they suddenly realized a fence went through the road. Nice.

Boat dock shots

These are the rest of the shots I took at the boat dock. They use some of these boats to ferry people out to Hawar Islands, which is a small group of islands off the coast of Bahrain that are used primary as resort islands. One of these days I'll make my way out there and check them out.

Fishing, lazy style

So we stopped at this boat dock for the hell of it and I got some really good pictures like this one. This is some type of contraption they use to either catch fish or crabs. Can someone fill me in on this? I do know that they traditionally make these out of palm tree parts, but this particular one is metal. I also understand the general principal behind them--there is only one way in so the animal in question gets stuck inside and then somebody comes and collects whatever is inside. I just want to know what they are catching.

Hurricane season?

On the way back from the tree of life I spotted these and had to get some pictures. Do you see something horribly wrong with the above pictures? Yes, that's right. Culverts. And in one case, culverts so large I probably could drive my car through them. And there's not one, not two, but three of them under that bridge. What the fuck? It rains a half dozen times here a year, and even at that the rain is sucked up by the sand so fast you didn't even know it had rained except for some wayward puddles like in the earlier photos I posted. So the irony behind these is amazing. Why? What the fuck possessed them to include huge ass culverts as part of the new highway construction? Are they expecting hurricanes any time soon? Do they know something the general public doesn't?

Tree of life doubles as a taxi stand

During our travels yesterday we made it back out to the tree of life, and what did we encounter out in the middle of fucking nowhere? A taxi, that's what. Apparently a group of white people--my guess is eastern European--took a taxi ALL THE WAY OUT TO THE TREE OF LIFE. That's gotta be like 100 bucks plus for that ride. I don't care how much they hype this tree, that's all it is, people. A FUCKING TREE. You would have to be out of your mind to take a taxi in this country out here. Wow. That's all I can say...

I wanna be buried under a pile of rocks too...

Josh and I took the new teacher Laurie out for a drive yesterday to get her out of the apartment. In our travels we discovered another set of Dilmun burial mounds. These bad boys are thousands of years old, and I know I've posted pics of them before but here's one more. Also, for the record, I found out why the Arabs have no respect for these mounds (one of the oldest sites in the world, btw) and continue to plow them under to build roads and buildings. Apparently, they feel that these were not the Arab people and therefore they have no respect for the history of the Dilmun people. A fucked up viewpoint, if you ask me.

And this is what we got

This is that same go-cart track that I posted earlier but at night. Those camp sights out in the oil fields were lit up like Christmas trees. Amazing...

Damn I'm good

This is a great photo. Good job, Byron. Josh and I decided to go driving around a couple days ago after dark to the oil fields to see what the camps looked like at night. Well, on the way we passed my favorite roundabout and I got a great night shot. Not too shabby taken from a moving vehicle at night, I must say...

OSHA would flip the fuck out

This is the base of some scaffolding next door to our building. Wow. Josh actually watched the whole thing come crashing down last week once already. So what did they do? Put it back up exactly the same way. There's nothing quite like watching ten Indians work on scaffolding 20 feet high supported on some rotten pieces of wood and a cinder block...

Thanks, but I'll pass.

I've been meaning to get a picture of this billboard forever and finally got a decent pic the other day. For such a conservative society I find it highly amusing that they would allow something like this. Sweet...

It rained and I'm ok

Two things. One, it rained HARD the other day. These are a couple pics of the street in front of our building to prove it. To get an idea of where I was standing, in the first picture that is our building to the left with the mosque (the white building) directly past it. In the second picture I'm standing basically in front of our door looking the other way down the street.

In other news, I went to the hospital today for the results of the shitload of tests that they've been putting me through. Good news. I'm just a fat guy with high blood pressure. Everything checked out perfectly except for my cholesterol levels. My bad cholesterol is within normal limits, but my good cholesterol is very low. The doc said the only way to get that up is to exercise and eat better. So, I feel much better now that I know there isn't a terrible amount of stuff wrong with me. He did order one more test that I have to do in two weeks to check some type of gland that secretes some hormone that controls blood pressure. Milking the insurance is what I say, but at least they are thoroughly checking me. Whoo hoo!

Election Day

So today is the day when Bahrainis go to the polls... for the second time EVER. And thank god because now hopefully these fucking campaign signs will come down. There are literally thousands in our neighborhood alone.

"Fuck it, Ahmed."

"It was a piece of shit anyway." I have finally figured out WHY there are so many abandoned wrecked cars here, such as this old school Caprice with a blown tire. My principal was at a light yesterday just waiting for it to change when she was rear-ended. Well, she decided to wait for the cops like you do in the states. That's NOT how they do it in Bahrain. If you are in an accident, if the vehicle is drivable you take it to the police's traffic accident place THEN tell them about it. What a fucked up system. If your car is not drivable, you leave it and just get it whenever...

Applebees, Arab style

So we went to this Applebees to check it out and see how close it was to the US Applebees. The glaring difference at first was the sign on the side of the building in Arabic. However, if you watched that YouTube video I posted a couple of days ago y0u would know that we heard rap and R&B blaring through the outside speakers. It didn't stop inside, either. In fact, the songs were unedited, so hearing "fuck" and "shit" were commonplace throughout our meal. Amazing. And there were Arab families everywhere. I'm surprised no one has ever complained. Otherwise, the decor was close to what it's like back home with the random shit on the walls, car parts and the like. But the obvious difference was in the back corner where we were--check out the hooka on the wall. Nice. And the other big difference? There were Bud bottles everywhere but they had no liquor license. It was all N/A. I thought the slogan was "Your neighborhood bar and grill." I guess here it's just the neighborhood grill. By the way, this Applebees was located at the Bahrain Mall, that's why I threw in that pic.

It's Geants, and it's for you!

This is Geants, the closest equivalent to a super Wal-Mart that they have. Think Wal-Mart meets Best Buy meets Dollar General. Very strange store. But huge.

Nothin' quite goes with DQ like a Mosque

This roundabout always cracks my ass up. Nothing quite like a Dairy Queen and a Mosque sharing parking lots... "Hey, does that Blizzard come with a Qur'an?"

Don't flick this guy off

That's Hassan Nazralla, the leader of Hezbollah. Those are the guys that Israel went to war with in Lebanon. They are fundamentalist and scary as shit. So, if you see someone driving around with Hassan's mug in the window, let that guy do whatever the fuck he wants. You want to cut me off? Go right ahead, buddy. I don't want a rocket launched at my car, that's for sure...

And that's why this country can afford to pay me

Look at all those fucking tanks. These shots were taken over the better part of a mile and a half. There were lots and I mean lots of these. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how your car back in the states gets its gas.

A few for Dad

Now that it's winter, the road construction has started in full force. Here are some pics for my dad by request. The first one is a picture of one of my favorite signs--the infamous "we work for you." Wherever that gaudy yellow sign is found, it is guaranteed that you have sat in a traffic jam for 15 minutes before you even GET to this sign. The second one has what in Ohio would be typical ODOT workers, but here are Indians that work for the Ministry of Works. Highway workers around the world are all the same--lazy. The third and fourth are just random pictures of equipment. The fifth is a nice picture again showing the total disregard for safety here. That is like a foot, foot and a half drop off there on a high speed highway with nothing but some dinky ass cones keeping your car away from that drop off. Back home you'd see concrete barriers there for sure. Although I must say it's nice not seeing orange barrels everywhere. For that matter, ANYWHERE.

Bahrain National Stadium

This is Bahrain National Stadium, where they have all the major soccer matches. Someday I'll actually go in and get some better pictures, but for now this will do. I just wanted to get a good picture of the praying mantis lights. Weird.

I've got a bunch more pictures to post, but I'm tired and have to fast for 12 hours starting in an hour for my tests at the hospital tomorrow. So I'm going to eat and go to bed.