Coastline Photos

These are some of the best of a shitload of photos I took of the sea, bridges, and skylines from a spot near my house. I go there from time to time to eat lunch in my car just to look at the water. It reminds me of when I would eat lunch by Lake Erie back home.

The second photo is of some Indian dudes fishing that I was watching, the third of the coastline with the library in the distance, and the fourth with the triangle bridge dead center.

Something you don't see everyday

So it's been in the news the last few days that the US has been performing war games in the Persian Gulf (read: HERE!!). It's most likely in response to the British sailors that have been captured by Iran, although the US vehemently denies that. And personally, I think it's a fucking retarded idea. We don't need any more Arabs pissed off at us, IMHO. Either way, the US navy 5th's fleet is based out of Bahrain, and apparently right next door to me. I knew I lived close to the US base (you can see it from my bedroom window) but this morning I realized exactly HOW close. In the first picture you can see directly in the center of the picture what I think is the USS Dwight Eisenhower. In any case that is an US aircraft carrier which I am 100% certain is (or has) taken part of these games that are shocking the world. And the weirdest part? I took this picture from my bedroom window. Amazing. Those buildings in front of the ship are all part of the Navy base--you can see the yellow barricades where the entrance to the base is. The second picture is the exact same shot except I didn't use the zoom on my camera. Directly in front of the base is the main drag of Juffair (where I live). You can see the American influence hard core in that strip mall. Check out all the American restaurants--(from left to right) Chili's, Burger King, Costa Coffee, Hardee's, Dairy Queen, Papa John's, and McDonalds.

I have come to the realization that I need to move out of this neighborhood. If the Iranians (who are a mere 70 miles from here) are going to bomb, this would make a likely first target.

Would you fly this airline?

And the last of the Kuwait pics. As we were waiting in the plane to take off, this bad boy rolled up next to us--a huge Saudi Arabia jetliner. I don't know if I would ever, ever fly that airline, but they still have bad-ass planes. The next pic is to prove I was at the Kuwait airport, and the third is looking down at Kuwait City from the plane at take-off.

It's vacation time, biatches...

And I'm still not done posting pictures from my last vacation. I need to get on top of this shit, but now I have a week to do it. We have a one week vacation before the last stretch of school starts. The year is finally winding down. Finally. Speaking of which, I've got my flight plans for going home. Here's the deal--I fly into Minneapolis on the 27th of June, but because the travel agent couldn't get me a connecting flight I have to stay in Minneapolis overnight. Which is fine, because that's where Rachel lives and I'll just spend the night with her. The next day I fly into Columbus around 6 pm. I'm leaving Ohio on the 10th of August, spending roughly a week in Minnesota with Rachel, and then the fun really begins. Since the school pays for our flight coming and going we decided to stop over (on the school's dime) in England (fuck it, right?), and spend a week there and in Scotland. We fly out of Scotland to Bahrain, but it should be fun as hell. I'm looking forward to it. Now's the chance to see the world, me thinks.

OK, back to the pictures. The first is of the waiting area as we were waiting to board our flight out of Kuwait to Bahrain. I thought the airline's camel logo was mildly amusing and thus decided to share it with you.

The second looks just like a little room. It is a little room, but it is sooo much more. Just to the left (and out of the picture) are security guards and metal detectors. If a woman sets off the detectors, she is escorted into this little room (which was about 10 feet from where we were waiting for our flight) and patted down. It was again mildly amusing to watch women in burqas get hauled off to this room for a what-are-you-hiding-under-the-bed-sheet check.

And the third is a pic of people boarding the flight. Like I said in an earlier post, if you were at West Virginia international airport and saw this you would probably shit your pants.

Harleys, Beaches, and Hamburgers

Odd mix of photos, I know. But I didn't get many photos in Kuwait, and I have to post the good ones. OK, good ones and ones I wish were good. Case in point--the first is a blurry pic of the Harley shop with a dude in a thobe outside. I really wish this would have come out better. How many chances do you get to snag a photo of a dude in a thobe outside of a Harley shop in a mall in Kuwait? Not fucking many, I tell you.

The second is of the beach just outside of the mall where I got the Harley photo. Apparently women are NOT allowed on the beach in Kuwait (Kuwait is much more conservative than Bahrain) but yet men can walk around half naked and it's AOK. Hypocrisy, anyone?

Anyway... the third is a pic of a Johnny Rockets that we passed on our way outta the mall. If you have read my blog at all, you know that I love the Johnny Rockets here. It's all American, and I mean allfuckinamerican. The food is imported from the states, there is no Arabic on the menu, even the power is 110 NOT 220 which means they have their own generators to power the place. It's uber impressive--but somehow methinks this one in Kuwait has a slightly more Arab flavor. Maybe it's just me--or maybe it's the Arabic sign. I dunno.

Persian Gulf 6 months, no water

I have lived in the Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf, as the US calls it) for 6 months and I have yet to be out on the water. I am extremely disappointed with myself, seeing as how I grew up on Lake Erie and have gone out every year since I can remember many, many times. However, I have yet to find a public place like this one we found in Kuwait in Bahrain. I've been on this island for 6 months and all I've seen are fishing dhows (old school fishing boats) and shitty Indian 8ft fiberglass boats. I was in Kuwait for a weekend and found a nice harbor like this. If only I could find that here...

And on another note--there was a T.G.I.Friday's there (another restaurant Bahrain is missing) and I scored a pic of these Ohio plates on the wall. That's a long way from Ohio for these old plates to travel. I'm impressed...

Kuwait Towers

And two more of the Kuwait towers. I kinda wish I could have gone up in them, but once again see previous posts about our lovely host...

And for good measure I'm throwing in a pic of the mini me stoplight. Enjoy.

I want that fucking plate

Really, really bad. I don't think Kuwait is as bad as Saudi where they literally chop your hand off for stealing, but I still don't want to find out what they do to you for it in Kuwait--so I'll have to settle for a picture. The second is of a 80's Caddy with hydros--sorry it's blurry, but once again I had to take these on the fly. The third is of the Kuwait towers, the "tourist" spot in Kuwait city. Really, they just appeared to be some old towers they put up in maybe the late 70's that have since lost the novelty touch that other touristy shit like the Eiffel tower have manged to hang on to...

Kuwait pics

So aside from the desert party we really didn't do much in Kuwait during our two day stay. That was attributed to our host not having the slightest bit of host skills whatsoever. I don't want to be too mean because she is Rachel's friend, but she fucking sucked. She told us if we wanted to see anything touristy to get a cab. Nice, huh? So I snagged pictures when I could, because we spent half of our time in a mall and the other half at her apartment (besides when we went to eat--Mikey that Ruby Tuesday pic is for you, and IT IS NOT the same food as home!).

The first pic is of a bridge lined with Kuwaiti flags. The second is just of some buildings--and for the record, the architecture was much better than Bahrain, where most of the buildings are blah looking and almost all are sand colored. In Kuwait the buildings had more style and were more colorful.

Sand is dry, Kuwait is sandy, but Kuwait is not dry

So we finally found this desert "party" which was in a tent in the middle of the desert in the middle of Kuwait. Did I mention that Kuwait was dry? This party wasn't. It was fueled by a bunch of Arab ravers drinking anything they could get their hands on. Bizzare. What was even more bizzare than that was this "tent" that the party was in. When we pulled up (after doing some 4-wheeling in the desert) it looked like a typical Arab tent, a dark canvas material blowing in the wind. Inside is what was atypical. The tent has an outward appearance of being something temporary, but once you get inside, you realize this thing is pretty permanent (or someone has alot of money to blow.) It had a tiled floor with lights underneath that would rival some clubs' floors that I've been to, it had a huge sound system, and it even had a little Indian guy that was refilling waters. Truly bizzare. It was definitely something I can chalk off on the life experiences list, even if I did have mono and wasn't able to party until the sun came up like the rest of 'em.

Ethanol not only powers cars, it can get you wasted

Or kill you, depends on the way "it is cut." (Straight from Susan, our Kuwati host.) We got into Kuwait, and the first thing Susan wanted to do (after she showed us her apartment) was go party. Kuwait is a dry country, and most people resort to making their own alcohol using any and everything they can find. At Susan's place I had a glass of wine that was made using rice (and tasted like it too.) We then moved on to pre-party at some ex US Navy guys' place where they had an ethanol Jack Daniel's (see first pic) which was a 3 on the resemblance scale to actual Jack Daniel's. Next to it was a bottle of pure ethanol which is being touted in the states as an alternative fuel for your car but in Kuwait is touted as something that will fuck you up that you can hide in the innocence of a water bottle. I will never, ever, ever live in a dry country.

Anyway, this "party" that we were headed to was apparently out in the desert. Way, way, way, way, way out in the desert. We drove over an hour in a sandstorm in the middle of the night towards Iraq to go to this fucking desert party. The picture of the McDonald's sign was taken out in the middle of fucking nowhere were our convoy of about 4 cars met another convoy of 4 cars to go find this mystical desert party. On to the next post...

All right blog, it's me and you

I've been slacking, and I'm going to make up for it. Here I go.

So I went to Kuwait for the weekend a couple weeks ago, and it pretty much wasn't that fun. It's not that Kuwait sucks, which it kind of does, but rather our host sucked (see next post for that rant). Rachel, Krisvell, and myself scored some ultra-cheap tickets on promotion from Jazira Airways (more on them in a minute) and decided to go visit Susan, a teacher that was at MKS last year that Rachel knew. What an adventure that was.

Up until then, I had not left Bahrain via the airport (or any other way, for that matter) and was shocked to find the absolute lack of security at the airport. The only thing that even resembled an airport back home was the x-ray machine for the luggage which was manned by a couple of Bahrainis more interested in their cigarettes and conversations with each other than the contents of the bags. Anyway, after you throw the bags on the conveyor, you walk through a metal detector--which by the way I've seen more secure and modern metal detectors at high schools back home--and that's it. No shoe checks, no pat downs, nothing. So then we got our tickets and hauled ass to the terminal because we were late. When we got to the terminal, I was fully expecting to see our plane loaded and ready to take off. Instead, I found a shuttle bus which took us out to the waiting plane which was in the tarmac area that we had to board via mobile steps. Nice.

So we get on the plane, get our seats, and I almost immediately came to the realization that we were the ONLY white people on the plane. The entire plane was full of thobes and ninjas. If you were some hillbilly back in America and boarded a plane full of people like this at Nashville International Airport you'd most likely shit your pants. I, on the other hand, was rather relaxed. A far cry from the Byron I was before I came out here, that's for sure. Coming out here to Bahrain, I sat next to a Muslim wearing a thobe from Columbus to Minneapolis and about shit my pants. Now I still take notice of people dressed like that, but am far from scared or intimidated. Anyway, the little TV screens dropped down and began to show the Muslim travel prayer, in Arabic of course. I guess you should expect that when you are flying with an Arab company. I wanted to get a picture of that, but figured it would probably piss someone off on the plane, and since I was in the far minority I instead managed to snag a picture of the flight path on the TV which is in all Arabic--no help to us English speakers. They occasionally had a translation in English, but it is very different to hear instructions and whatnot in Arabic with English being the secondary language. 90% of the time, English is first and Spanish, French, whatever follow.

Rachel scored a nice pic of the sunset over the clouds taken at cruising altitude which I included above. She's lucky to have gotten that shot because the entire flight was only 45 minutes long which meant we were at cruising altitude for a whopping 1o minutes or so.

The third picture is of some water towers in Kuwait which were the first thing I saw after we got out of the airport. There were about five of these things which at night resembled giant martini glasses. Too bad my picture is shitty--that's what you get taking a picture out of a moving vehicle late at night.

I know, I know, I know

So I've been busy lately. I've had mono. It's laid my ass out something fierce, I've done nothing but lay around for weeks. I've been admitted to two different hospitals, and it took the second time around for them to figure out what the hell was wrong with me despite the fact that I told them mono was going around the school. Apparently some fucking kid must have sneezed on his homework and handed it to me. I thought I had been exposed to it years ago when my brother got it, but apparently not. And what's worse, 95% of all adults are already carriers of mononucleosis which means only 5% of adults can get mono. Talk about shit luck. I came all the way out to the Middle East to catch fucking mono. Oh well. Rachel took good care of me, and it appears the worst is over. I put my first full day in at work today for the first time in three weeks, and I made it so I assume I'm on the upswing.

And before that Rachel's mom came to visit from the states for a week. That was interesting.

So all and all, I've been fairly preoccupied and left my blog unattended. I'm sorry. Fuck you.

Check out this picture I snagged a couple weeks ago of a guy in a thobe 4-wheelin' on this tire cover. Nice.