Byron In Bahrain

Arabs suck at everything

2008-01-31T15:57:00.001+03:00

I'm convinced of it. I've been convinced of it for a long time. Honestly, I came out here with an open mind. I gave everyone I met a chance. And time and time again the people that let me down/screwed me/pissed me off/needed their face fucking kicked in were almost unilaterally of Arab origin. I don't buy the Arab hierarchy that Egyptians are at the bottom of the food pyramid. All Arabs are liars, cheats and thieves, regardless of country of origin. Egyptian, Lebanese, Saudi, Bahraini I don't give a fuck. And I don't give a shit who knows. I've had them fuck me over too many times (with today being another time) and I'm sick of it.

I'm pissed, can you tell?

Today's incident at school is rather minor, compared to the royal fucks I (and pretty much any other westerner at our school) have experienced over the course of two miserable years at MKS. Not to mention the countless horrible experiences I've had with them outside of school. Arabs are Arabs, irregardless of where you have to deal with them. It's just worse when they are your superiors.

Now, do I regret coming to this country? Absolutely not. I met a wonderful person who otherwise I would never have met. I've traveled to a bunch of countries. And arguably most importantly, I will come back to the states (whether it be next year or a few years out) with first-hand knowledge that Arabs are miserable, horrible people. The list of fundamental problems with Arabs could easily take me the better part of an evening to list here. If you really want to know, wait until you see me and give me a beer or two. Then I'll really let you know what I think of them. Suffice it to say it's not a pretty list. And I can verify every claim via personal experience. These are not merely stereotypes. These problems exist, and they are rampant.

Are there good Arabs? I'm sure. The entire race cannot suck donkey dick, it's statistically impossible. I just haven't met any.

On another note, I apologize for the lack of updates. You see, we have very little to no internet right now. While I can't directly attribute this one to Arabs, I can insinuate. Apparently an undersea cable from Egypt to Italy was cut a few days ago, close to the Egyptian side of the cable. That has left the entire middle east and India with no internet. Today is better then yesterday (where I actually thought I had hit the building's bandwith limit) but it's still shitty. Fucking Arabs.

WTF?

2008-01-26T23:17:00.001+03:00

As I sit here uploading photos for my next post, I ran across this photo in the Bahrain daily paper. What the fuck is this? The article that accompanies it doesn't seem to match the photo, nor does it reference it.

If the link doesn't work, go to the Bahrain Tribune Daily and look for a post about curbs on powers of law enforcement officers. While you're there, check out some of the fucked up news of Bahrain.
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Now playing: Shinedown - Heroes

Random photos in Sotogrande

2008-01-25T16:19:00.000+03:00

Before I post my next post of Lisbon, I have some random photos taken at Sotogrande (Carol & Ian's place in Spain).

We played poker a few times, just like home. Except we were playing for Euros.
Poker again. That game went on and on before we finally gave up.
For 3000 Euros a month (4500 dollars) you too could have your own place that had its very own boat dock on the Mediterranean Sea. Talk about nice. This is looking out the deck which was separated from the living room by a sliding glass wall.
Laurie decided we needed a Christmas tree--and here it is. It's a couple branches pulled off a tree nearby. Laurie and Whiz bet each other 20 euros that it would wilt before Christmas, hence the money in the "tree." Nothing like a trailer park tree in a Bentley house. BTW, Laurie won the bet.
There were two really nice things about staying here while we were in Spain. One, it was free. Two, Laurie and Whiz made lots of homemade meals which saved us a buttload of money.
A look up at the dining room table and part of the living room. Behind me is the porch and boat launch.
Rachel outside:)
Turned around from where Rachel is sitting. This boat actually belongs to the neighbors.
Looking out from the porch.
So besides this place being super-nice, it had super-nice things inside. Like a Bose stereo system. This is me chilling listening to music really loud over really expensive speakers. Ah, paradise.
Christmas time. Laurie bought us each a couple of presents. How nice.
This was Christmas dinner. It was a mixture of good 'ol American classics and weird British food. You'll see what I mean in a minute.
A random photo thrown in of Gibraltar.
Taken at a Pizza Hut in Gibraltar. And you thought Canada had lax alcohol laws.
Another Christmas dinner pic.
The weird British food I was talking about, although I didn't mind this one. It basically was a hotdog wrapped in bacon. Pork in pork. I'll take it.
Proof that Whiz cooks.
Below the apartment, they had a massive parking garage, much like a mall or something. This was a door for the elevator to go up to the apartment. I thought it was funny that they called it a "portal."
Another picture of the parking garage.

Me talking to all of you guys on Christmas via Skype. This is where I discovered the wonders of Skype. I knew all about it, but never bothered downloading or trying it. What a mistake that was. Skype fucking rocks.

Gibraltar

2008-01-14T18:25:00.000+03:00

And I finally uploaded all of the Gibraltar pictures that I wanted on here. Remember, I have at least twice the amount of pictures that I load on here, I just don't have the space on blogger for them all plus some of them suck. And here we go.
Gibraltar (known by the locals as "Gib" or "The Rock" is actually owned by the United Kingdom, so when you go to visit it you actually have to go through passport control (which is a joke, by the way.) And all the locals in Gib speak English with a British accent. It's like entering a whole different world from Spain. Gibraltar is held by the British for military reasons, because it's at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea. If you look at a map, the Med Sea starts where Spain and Morocco almost touch, and, in fact, when you are here at Gibraltar you can see Morocco (which is in Africa) even on a cloudy day like this. The Strait of Gibraltar can be traveled by boat in less than a half hour. It's supposedly one of the ancient pillars of Hercules, the other in Africa across the strait. I suggest checking out wikipedia's entry on Gibraltar for more--I could go on and on. The picture above is the entrance to Gibraltar. The three times we went we parked in a parking garage in Spain and walked across the border. The line of cars to get in was usually huge, and Gibraltar is pretty tiny (other than the rock) so it seemed easier to walk across.
This is "the rock" as we were driving toward it. The sea is behind that wall.
The rock kind of pops out of the horizon wherever you are, it's actually kind of nice in case you're lost--just look for the massive rock.
This is after we parked and were walking across to the border. Those cars are at a standstill trying to get into the country.
A sign (in Spain) at the border. Look closely at the black one.
Another sign near the "sex shop" sign. What this says is no left turn, except for tourists. How the hell can they tell the difference?
Once we walked across the border, we hopped a double decker bus (just like in England) to take us into town. We could have walked, but that's not as fun as taking a double decker bus. Along the way we drove past this little construction project. "New Kingdom Hall." Yeah, Grandma, your cult IS everywhere.
A cool monument at passport control. It says "Gibraltar- Cradle of History."
Walking into Gib was like walking into England, complete with the telephone booths.
And this street, Main Street, could have been pretty much anywhere in London.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If there are people, there are McDonalds. This one is in Gib and in English. Right across the border (about 1/10 of a mile) was another one in Spain, in Spanish.
And complete with English mailboxes.
A side street.
Apparently one of the draws to Gib besides the rock is the fact that you can buy booze, smokes, and gas dirt cheap without duty and VAT (value-added tax, around 17%) so Spaniards come by the droves to buy this shit then hop back across the border. There were lots of shops on the main drag just like this one.
Typical English road sign. Looks cool, but totally non-functional unless you are on foot.
Another shot down the main drag.
So, what do you sell again?
A look up the rock--we were headed that way.
This is where we ate lunch, a typical British joint.
And although it was fairly cold out, spitting rain, and around noon I had to have a beer. I have things I must do in every country and this is one. Shit, eat McDonald's, buy a Harley shirt, eat at Hard rock, and have a beer--if at all possible. Unfortunately, I was only able to have a beer here. Damn it.
They have a cable car that goes up the rock, from there you are left to your devices to find the touristy shit which is scattered all over the top. We thought that was the only way to do it until some guy with a van approached us and offered to be our tour guide. And if I've learned one thing in my travels, personal tour guides ARE ALWAYS BETTER. TRUST ME. So we hopped in this rather eccentric native Gibraltarans van (who took great offense to being called "English"--he was "British") and headed up the hill. And thank Jebus we did, because by the end of the tour (we stopped off at about 4-5 places) had we walked we would have walked a few miles, uphill both ways. And I guarantee we wouldn't have found everything he showed us. Plus the price he charged us covered the admission at both of the paid attractions, so it wasn't a bad deal at all. Take my advise on this--if you ever go to a foreign country and can find a personal guide--USE HIM. Anyway, this was the first stop of our trip. It's the Pillars of Hercules monument.
Another view.
This is looking where the monument is facing. All those boats sitting there are waiting to go into the harbor at Algeciras. That's where we sat for fucking ever on the ferry coming across. More on that later. Remember, I'm posting this trip backwards.
We're still at the monument when I took this picture. Notice anything strange? Yeah, that's a ship sinking.
A close up of the sinking ship. The tour guide said it went under during a bad storm about a month prior, but was stuck on a coral reef and they still didn't know what to do with the ship.
The plaque on the Pillars of Hercules monument.
So we got back in the van and headed up the rock a bit more. You can see how narrow these roads are. The tour guide said they were all old military roads that were closed to the public until a few years ago. The very top part of the rock still is off limits/military only.
See that ring in the rock on the side of the road? Apparently those were used back in the day by the military. They used those in conjunction with donkeys to get heavy things like cannons up the steep road.
Back of the tour van we were in. It has plates just like the UK, a yellow in back and white in front. The only difference is "GBZ" under the EU symbol instead of "GB."
And my favorite part of Gibraltar--the monkeys. Towards the top of the rock, monkeys started appearing out of nowhere. Apparently they live on the rock year-round and have been there for a long time, just roaming about. This was taken as we parked the van.
And as we were getting out, one of them jumped on the van. Later we saw them riding around on the roof of cars and vans.
This guy's just chillin.

The next stop on the tour were some natural caves. They were larger than I expected, but nowhere near the size of Jesse James' caves in Missouri (right, dad?) Although these have a lot more history, being mentioned in ancient text.
Laurie and Whiz inside of the caves.
They had cool lighting inside, as well as a little stage with about 200 seats for small plays, weddings, or whatever.

Laurie, Whiz and I are on the stage with the seating behind us.
One of the stalagmites fell and this is a cutaway of it. The rings have to do with the amount of rain, just like rings on a tree.
Outside of the caves, with another monkey on the van.
Driving again--looking down toward the bay.
This was a nice view point we stopped at, that also had lots of people and monkeys. There were signs everywhere telling you there was a 500 pound fine (1000 bucks) for feeding the monkeys, but people were doing it everywhere anyway, like here.
Case in point, that lady right there. You can see all the food scraps as well.
Gib has a more sheer cliff on the Eastern side then the Western, which is evident here.
We were told by our guide that this monkey was the oldest on the island, although I forget how old he was and what his name is. I do remember the guide telling us that there are more than 300 of these guys roaming around freely on the upper part of the rock.
And as we were walking back to the van, I heard Laurie screaming but was preoccupied taking a picture somewhere else. When I turned to her, she had a monkey on her shoulder. She looks really happy here, but this was a lucky shot. She was screaming "get this off of me!" The monkey decided he liked her hair and stroked it for about 30 seconds before he jumped off. The rest of us just kinda stared at her:)
This monkey had a bag of chocolates. I watched him for a while, peeling the wrapper off and eating the candy.
This is the highest point on the rock, and is off-limits except for military.
This is looking down the eastern edge of the rock. All those white specks are birds, there were thousands and thousands of them. It was quite a site.
Stop number 3 on the trip were the Great Siege Tunnels. These were man-made tunnels made by the British military a long, long time ago. There was another set of man-made tunnels that they made during WWII, but we didn't go to those.
This is looking out by the entrance to the tunnels. The city of Gibraltar are those buildings, most of which are built on reclaimed land. Just to the right of the city is the end of the airport runway, more on that in a second.
The road leading to the Great Siege Tunnels.
This was for the cable car to get up and down the rock. That used to be the only way to get up.
Inside the GST. This is a really old cannon.
The British love wax figures in museums and historical sites, and this place was no exception. These guys are showing how they made the tunnels--by hand. What a pain in the ass that would have been.
Entrance to the tunnels.
Why this picture is right here is beyond me, but anyway, this is the double decker bus we rode in Gibraltar. They didn't call Spain Spain in Gib, they called it "The Frontier" or "Frontera" in Spanish. There is a long-standing pissing match between Spain and the UK over who should own Gibraltar.
This is interesting. This was taken by the GST. What you are looking at is the entrance to Gibraltar. To get into Gib you have to walk (or drive) across the airport runway. That road is the only way into Gibraltar, and when a plane is coming they close it down like railroad tracks. Bizarre. To give you an idea, if you follow that road towards the top of the photo, before you get to what looks like a main road is the edge of Gib, where passport control is.

More Great Siege Tunnels, this one with Whiz.
That is a mark from the tool they used to hand make these tunnels. They were all over the place, obviously.
Me being a tard--maybe the air in the tunnel was getting to me:)
Looking down the tunnel...
Airport is to the top of the photo, cemetery to the bottom part.
The observation deck by the GST.
The runway, then Spain.
The eastern edge of the runway. Don't miss that, or you're fucked.
Going back downhill. You can see the western edge of the runway in this photo as well.
But that's a better shot of it. Obviously the runway is mostly on reclaimed land, I'm fairly sure mother nature didn't do that.
Looking up the hill from the GST.
A closer view of the road crossing the runway. I was fascinated with that.
On our way back down when we got into the old part of town we went down some pretty narrow streets.
And here was fundamental problem number one with cars on streets that are 300 years old. It was a showdown between our tour guide and this asshole. We won. This guy had to back down this narrow, winding road about 1/4 mile before we could pass him. Nice.
Another pic of the old town.
This is the oldest building on the rock. It was built by the Moors in like the 1500's or something. Old.
I don't know if you all know about Madeline, that British girl that disappeared in Portugal (I think) a while back. People suspect the lawyer parents, but no one really knows. This was a memorial for her on the fence of a church.
A nice sign for Dad.
A phone booth in an odd place.
Cool looking placement for a church.
The front plate of a Gib vehicle.
On the way out we noticed this fountain--how the hell do you make the water that color? A shitload of food coloring, I imagine. But the better question is why?
The Gib logo on a post. Rachel likes these types of pictures.
A monument about immigration. I think that dude's telling those Moroccans to get the hell back to their own shitty country and leave the Brits alone.
A few of the rock and old (not reclaimed land) town.

As we were leaving, I spotted these two hoodlums.
The bus stop, as we were leaving.
The road crossing the runway on our way out. See those people walking? The TSA would flip the fuck out in the state with security that lax. But really, they have no choice here other than to build a tunnel under it, I suppose.
That's the gate that closes when a plane is landing.
The sign warning about the "airfield ahead."
The price of fuel. Remember, this is in Pound Sterling and in liters.
Scooters were a common sight wherever we went no matter the country. I imagine this is a scooter rental place.
Gracias Por Su Visita.
Walkin' across the runway.
The Mickey D's I was talking about in Spain.
Passport control. What a joke that was. They didn't even look at the picture. All you had to do was flash that it was an American passport and they waved you on. They didn't check us on bit. In fact, we only walked through a metal detector on our way out, but even then no one was taking it seriously. I think it actually was off.

Another view walking toward passport control. I would highly suggest visiting Gib if you are ever in Spain. It was definitely worth it.

Ronda

2008-01-08T23:02:00.000+03:00

It took me three days to load this damn post because of all the pictures. So here we go, finally. We (Laurie, Whiz, Rachel and I) decided to take a day trip to Malaga, which is a pretty large city near where we were staying. So we drove 45 minutes to this fucking city and could not, for the life of me, find an empty parking garage. Rachel and Laurie really wanted to go to Malaga to see the Picasso museum and Picasso's birthplace. Well, not only could I NOT find a parking spot, the traffic in this godforsaken city was horrible. Part of the reason why we couldn't find parking garages was because we were sitting still in traffic most of the time we were in the city. And to top it off, Whiz can't handle big city traffic so he was having a mini-meltdown in the back seat. So after a few hours of sitting in traffic we decided to fuck it and leave. Well, on the way back we decided to not completely waste the day and decided to head to this little town up in the mountains called Ronda that a few people had recommended. So we hopped off the highway and got on this narrow two lane road that winded up the side of the mountain to Ronda.And about an hour into the drive up the mountains (the Sierra Nevada), we ran across this little sign--SNOW!! We didn't actually run across any, but it was cool to know that we were in a place that it could actually snow.
There were a bunch of stop-offs along the way so you could take pictures or piss. I did both at this stop. The cool thing about this picture is that it shows you how high up we were at this point. We are almost in the clouds--that's not the top of a mountain straight ahead--that's a cloud.
Another view from the stop-off. It was really cloudy and partly raining that day. I would imagine if you went back and took this same road on a clear day it would have some sweet views.
Occasionally we would stumble across small mountain towns on the way like the one ahead, but for the most part it was a really deserted, curvy, dangerous mountain road. Speaking of which it was fun as hell to drive. The rental car was a turbo-diesel stick (as most every car is in Spain) and driving on this road was awesome. I took in every minute because I knew once I got back to the flat-land one-side-to-the-other-of-the-island-in-20-minutes Bahrain I wouldn't be able to drive on roads like this.
It's hard to see in this photo, but it's one of the only photos I have that show it. You can see terracing on the mountains if you look hard. We saw lots of that in Morocco, but very little in Spain.
What exactly are they trying to say with this sign?
A cool shot.
And Ronda. Back in the day (hundreds to thousands of years ago) they used to wall their cities in in both Spain and Morocco (and I imagine elsewhere) to keep out invaders. In Morocco we saw lots of that, but in Spain very little, if any old city walls remained. Except here, in Rhonda. Apparently due to it's position high up in the mountains the Muslims (the Moors) were able to hold on to it or whatnot. Or I could be completely wrong. I don't know. Look it up Dad and let me know:)
Here's the wall I was talking about.
Another pic driving toward Ronda. I like the sun coming through the clouds.
Interesting slippery road sign.
One of the coolest things about Ronda were the huge crevasses around the city. Here's one that was near the bullfighting ring (coming up). If you look closely there is a bike stuck down there. Hope there wasn't anyone on it when it took the plunge.
Standing from the same spot as the last photo. Gives you an idea of how high up this city was. It really seemed to be situated on kind of a plateau.
A side street in Ronda.
One of the cool things about Ronda was the small-town atmosphere and the sweet old buildings. It was really clean and touristy, but not too touristy. Although it was small, I really liked this town.
Another picture driving towards Ronda.
And this is the entrance to the oldest operating bullfighting ring in Spain. It was built in 1784.
This is the gift shop where I got mom's bull, right next to the bullring.
Next to the bullring.
And inside the bullring. It cost 6 euros to get in, which wasn't bad considering there was even a museum under the seating area (although they wouldn't let us take pictures.)

Entrance to the ring.
Whiz is like 6'5" so you get an idea of how tall these bull protecting thingys are. There were a bunch scattered around the inside of the ring.
They actually let you wander around wherever you wanted including inside the ring. Very cool.

Inside the bull area.
A training area of some sort. They had an elevated walkway you could walk around and look down at the various rooms and whatnot.

Behind me is the entrance to the ring. This is where I suspect the bull would run out of his pen into the ring.
A bulls head on the arch entering the ring.
You can see what I mean by the elevated walkway.
Some more shots from the walkway.
There was a stable out back that had a few horses in it.
And another Mickey D's.
And the coolest thing about Ronda. There was this bridge that was built in 1793 that spanned this massive gorge right in the middle of town. It was really fucking cool.
That's me standing about where the picture above was taken. The bridge is behind Rachel, who's taking the picture.
Another view of the bridge.
Looking toward the bridge. That camper is on the bridge, to give you an idea.
And another look on top of the bridge.
This was taken standing on the bridge looking the opposite way, upriver.
Standing on the bridge again. Cool shadow effects.
And looking down at the river, upstream.
There was an area about 5 square blocks that were pedestrian only that had a bunch of shops.
These were everywhere in Spain, in grocery stores, in little shops like this, etc. I'm fairly sure they are legs of lamb. It was really weird to see 100 of these hanging in the cheese section of the equivalent of our Giant Eagle.
Looking at the upstream side of the bridge.
And again upstream.
A church near where we parked.
And here are a couple out of place pictures. These were a couple dudes from Germany on some Goldwings that cruised by us in Marbella, another small town.
This beer was for sale at the grocery store. I had to try a bottle. And I must say this is one of the very few times I actually dumped out a bottle of beer, it was that shitty.
A fountain in Ronda.
A bridge in Marbella.
So on our way to Madrid, we stopped again in Malaga to try and find the Harley shop again. This time we found it. Only it was closed. So we waited in an illegal parking spot for about an hour waiting for it to open. Finally it opened and we were able to get shirts. The picture below is out the car window while we waited. The shop is ahead and to the right.

And on the way to Madrid we left before the sunrise. Hence, we were able to get this awesome shot of the sun rising over the Mediterranean (from the freeway:).

Madrid

2008-01-08T17:43:00.000+03:00

We drove to Madrid for an overnight visit, and it was well worth it. From where we were staying near Gibraltar it was about a 6 hour all-highway drive. Luckily the rental car had an auxiliary input for the iPod so we were able to keep ourselves entertained during the drive. Once we got to Madrid, we found our hotel which was piss-ass expensive for where it was located. Most everywhere we stayed in Morocco was well under 100 bucks a night, but Spain's prices were nothing like Morocco's, which is ok with me because luckily Spain was nothing like Morocco. The hotel we stayed at was 99 euros for the night which is like 150 bucks or so. To be fair, it was a 4 star hotel and was really nice. The drawback was that it was about 15 minutes outside of the city, and I really, really, really didn't want to drive in the city. Taxi rides are expensive but there was no way I was driving. I had already had a bad experience in another Spanish city (Malaga) and I wasn't going to do it again. So we checked it and got a taxi to our first destination--the Harley shop. And here she is. It wasn't open when the taxi got there, so we camped out at a pub across the street and had a beer waiting for it to open. Luckily when it did open they had plenty of shirts, and they spoke English--something I noticed at all the Harley shops, people always spoke English.
There's the pub we camped out at--it's the brown sign next to the blue one.
Our hotel room in Madrid. It was really nice, but for whatever reason both Rachel and I slept like shit that night.
And after the Harley shop, we got another taxi to the other staple of any city we visit--the Hard Rock Cafe.
This was inside the Hard Rock--that bull would make noise every half hour or so and scare the shit out of people eating. Another cool thing at this Hard Rock is that we got served by--wait for it--a MEXICAN. He was cool as hell, saying how he hated the Spaniards, etc. etc. I asked how the local beer was and he told me it was shitty and that I'd end up ordering a Budweiser next. He was right. In fact, when I ordered the Bud he began singing the Star Spangled Banner. Awesome.
Q. If you don't have a backyard in Spain, where do you let the dog get some fresh air? A. Your insanely small balcony on which the thing can't even turn around.
This was a really cool roundabout where we waited for the open-top bus to come pick us up so we could do the city tour. After the Hard Rock we went back to the hotel. This was the next morning. I decided to take my chances and try to find a parking garage in the city. So we checked out of the hotel, and luckily I was able to find a garage downtown. We then walked around until we found somewhere that looked like it might be a spot where one of the tourist busses might stop. We thought this place looked like a good candidate, and we were right.
And this is a park that is opposite of the arch roundabout in the picture above. Once again, while we were waiting patiently for the open-top bus.
Between Rachel and I we took way too many random pictures on this trip. This is one. And unfortunately, I'm going to probably post lots of these.
Back to the hotel room. I've stayed in my fair share of hotel rooms and this is something I've never seen. This is a speaker in the bathroom that was connected to the plasma TV. As you took a shit (or shower, or whatever) the program you were watching on the TV was blared into the bathroom so you wouldn't miss one second of your CNN news on repeat.
The main drag of Madrid had bleachers set up for over a mile, like they either just had or were going to have some type of parade.
So I've been on 4 different open-top buses (London, Edinburgh, Lisbon, and Madrid) and I've always had a live guide that spoke English. This bus, however, was much different. You paid for your tickets when you got on the bus (which were good for all-day, hop-on hop-off, like most of them) and they gave you a set of headphones. You had to plug them into the seat in front of you, and then select a language. As you drove past certain sites, an audio guide would tell you about them. After having done both, I would much rather have a live guide.
What's funny is that English was number two on the little guide here--designated by the Union Jack (the British flag) but the audio guide was clearly an American.
I forgot to mention that Madrid was hands down the coldest place I have been in a long time. I haven't seen snow in two years, and haven't experienced temperatures colder than 50 or so degrees since then. Well, this is me waiting at the bus stop for the open-top bus after just looking at the temperature which was on a sign nearby. It was around 10 am and 2 degrees Celsius (around 35 F.) I was dreading having to get on one of those open toppers and drive around the city. I was fucking freezing sitting there. My blood must have thinned, because before I moved away from home anything above freezing wasn't all that bad. As the day wore on, we passed a temp sign that said it had warmed to 10 degrees C, or 50 F. Which was still fucking cold on the top of that damn bus.
Random street in Madrid, as most of the pictures are.
Ah, McDonald's. Everywhere humans are. I've also made it a goal to eat at a Mickey D's in every country that I go to, and I was very, very, very happy to find that the McDonald's burgers in Spain taste just like American burgers. The beef in Bahrain tastes like ass, and no amount of ketchup can hide that shitty taste. The Big Macs I had in Spain and Morocco were heavenly.

Asians, no matter where you go, will always be taking pictures. This Japanese dude was no exception. In fact, he got in the way of lots of our pictures. Asshole.
This was a massive park in the center of the city, much like Central Park in New York City.
A cool fountain we passed as we were lost trying to find the hotel.
Me, freezing my ass off on the bus. I took well over half of the pictures on this vacation, but I was so cold on this bus that I refused to take my hands out of my pockets. All I wanted was off that damn bus. So almost all of the pictures you see of Madrid Rachel took. Apparently the Minnesota weather hasn't left her like the Ohio weather has left me.
A good ol' American restaurant.
I actually took this picture. It was an accident that I got the statue of the Pope (I didn't see it until I looked at this picture later.)
Most of the street signs were really, really small and really, really old. Some also were really, really cool like this one.
"Hey Miguel, what should we put in the center of this roundabout?"
"I don't know, Pablo. How about a rhinoceros will some balls ?"
WTF?
Another street. The bus was even colder on streets like this, where the sun was half-hidden by the buildings.
In both Madrid and Lisbon they've taken some of the main drags and tunneled them under the city so you can get from one side of the city to the other much more quickly. They helped quite a bit, actually.
An elevated look over part of Madrid.
Unfortunately, we didn't spend much time in Madrid because it was so expensive. I wish we could have spent more time there especially at night because they seemed to have overhead Christmas lights everywhere.
Another cool old road sign.
A little square.
I've seen cops in cars, trucks, motorcycles, hell even on horses. But never have I seen them on scooters. Although I must admit scooters and small motorcycles were all over Spain & Portugal. I imagine they are so popular because gas is so expensive and they are relatively easy to park.
Rachel took a construction photo for Dad. Of what, I'm not sure.
We got on the open-top bus not too long after they started running. Within 20 minutes the top of the bus was full even though it was fucking cold, and then as we began stopping at various places the line to get on the bus started growing at every stop. These are all people trying to get on our bus. Maybe 4 or 5 actually got on. This photo was taken only about an hour after we got on ourselves. If it is this damn busy in the middle of winter I can't imagine what it's like in the middle of summer during the tourist season.
The crowds in the city started picking up around 11 am or so.
"Adidas Stuff." ?

Navigation was a bitch with signs only in Spanish, though I suppose our map was only in Spanish too. It should have been easy enough to match point A on the map with point A on the sign--but you try driving here and then come talk to me.

I liked this building.
Entrance to the main park.
Behind that statue is the Prado museum. The line to get in this place was about 400 deep at 11:30 in the morning. There were huge lines everywhere for anything touristy.

"English Spoken Here" on the Union Jack. Where's the American flag?
Another park.

Randomness. The buildings by and large in the city were very large, very ornate, and very cool. Most of the architecture in Europe (or what I've seen, anyway) makes most American architecture look pretty bland.
And finally, a picture of one of the open-top buses that I froze my ass off on.

Some more photos

2008-01-06T21:03:00.000+03:00

And here are some more, with many to go... This is driving back from Madrid, we saw a few solar panel farms, but this was the biggest. Thousands and thousands of panels. I have no idea what they were powering, but it was cool.
These bulls were everywhere along the highways in Spain. We must have seen 20 of them as we drove to different cities.
Every so often along the highways in Spain we'd run across these bridges. They always were really small, no more than one lane across. But they didn't look old, and I couldn't figure out what they were for for quite some time. They have shitty looking (meaning non-automobile) dirt roads leading up on either side and it finally hit me what they were for. They were always in farm country, and I think they are for farmers so they can get their tractors and shit from one side of the field to the other because the highway cuts through it. How nice of Spain.
So when Rachel opened up the glove compartment of the rental car, we found a reflective vest, similar to what Dad wears for ODOT. I wondered what the hell it was for, until we started seeing people broken down on the highway, and all of them were wearing one of these vests. Later I was reading a pamphlet on Spanish road laws and one of them is that you have to have one of these in your car and wear it in case of breakdown. Another fucked up one they have is that if you wear glasses you have to have a spare set in the car at all times. Apparently they check for them every year during inspection.
A small town near the cable car. We got off on the wrong exit looking for the cable car, but still found some cool stuff.
Like this castle thing.
And this. I had to drive to it to see what the hell it was. More on that in a second.
Benalmadena--the wrong exit.
A Buddhist temple, that's what that white building was above. The weird thing is that it was located on the edge of a hill overlooking the Med. Sea. Prime real estate, if you ask me. This picture is of the inside of the temple.
And a close up view of the top of the temple.
A look out the front door of the temple. You can see what I mean about prime real estate.
And another picture of the temple.

And happy birthday Ben! Finally old enough to get legally smashed!!

Cable car in Benalmedina

2008-01-06T19:32:00.000+03:00

On our drive to another city in Spain we saw this cable car that went up the side of a big mountain on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. So on one of our off days I thought it would make a good day trip, and I was right. It really was bad ass. It cost 12 and a half euros (about 20 bucks) but was worth it. It took about a half hour or so to get to the top of the mountain, and at the top were all kinds of footpaths, a bird sanctuary, and a donkey path down the hill. Bad ass. Sorry if there are lots of pictures, I'm only posting about a 1/4 of what I actually took.Looking up the mountain...

Me, excited as hell to go on this thing. Rachel, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. She was better once we were actually in it.
There were hardcore mountain bikers taking bikes up to the peak to ride back down. That takes some balls.

That's the highway we used--the M15.

The lodge at the top.

One of the many, many birds. This was the only one with a hood though...
An owl...
And a bald eagle....

The line to get back down.
There were footpaths everywhere to explore the peak of the mountain. We unfortunately got to the top near closing time and didn't have time to walk around. Plus it was cold as hell.

Comin back down

Lots of homes had solar panels. I noticed as a whole the country was very alternative energy. Cool.

I've got lots more, but I'll spare you...

Random photos

2008-01-06T17:16:00.000+03:00

Remember, I'm doing this backwords. It's going to take me days, if not a week or two to get all of the pictures that I want up here. I have to sort through 2000 pictures that we took (or 4 gigs) and that takes a while, as well as uploading. So keep checking and I should have one or more new posts everyday until this trip is all posted.This is a street in Gibraltar, more pics on that to come.
We stopped at a grocery store in some small town in Spain and they had these on all the bottles of booze (which was right next to the pet section.)
This made me laugh. It was on a trash can near the grocery store. "In the interest of all citizens" in other words "keep your shitty smelling trash in your house until everyone is in bed."
There were lots and lots and lots of tunnels in Spain.
This is some random mountain that I thought looked pretty cool.
This is a highway that ran along the Mediterranean Sea.
Rachel tried to score some construction shots for Dad. Sorry about the low light.
Here's another one.
And another one. They had these huge signs all over the place, but I couldn't understand any of them. I took that to mean I didn't have to follow the laws--after all, I couldn't read the sign, officer.
This is where we stayed, the place Ian was renting. This bad boy is 4500 bucks a month, and it's in probably the richest town of Spain on the coast. We were way out of our class bracket, but fuck it, it was free. Carol and Ian were supposed to come for Christmas and New Year's but never showed up. So it was just Laurie, Wiz, Rachel & I. Not too shabby. There is no way in hell we would have been able to afford being on vacation as long as we were if we didn't stay here. It was really nice of them to let us stay there--and on top of that, Ian wasn't paying for it anyway--Exxon Mobile was.
We had a couple poker nights to keep us entertained. That's Laurie in her PJ's, and her new fiance, Whiz. Whiz is from Carol and Ian's hometown in England, and he proposed to her while we were there.
A freeway sign for our exit.
A backed up view of the apartment. Under this bridge is water for the super rich people's boats to get to their docks.
To the right standing on the bridge above.
And to the left standing on the bridge above.
The name of the town (or rather, gated community) we stayed in was Sotogrande.
Looking down the street. You had to walk out from the apartment, over the bridge, and out to this road to get to the car. The building had a huge underground parking garage but we didn't have the clicker to open the door to get in so we had to park out here. Our rental is the red car on the left.

Looking up from the same spot as the above picture. The apartment is the building in the back.

Marbella

2008-01-05T22:54:00.000+03:00

One day we went on a little day trip to a town about 45 minutes away called Marbella. We had gone there a day prior looking for the bull fighting ring to see a bull fight but couldn't find it. We went back the next day to explore the city, and here are some pics.There was a nice beach with a walkway with all kinds of stores and things, so we decided to go for a little walk. That's the Mediterranean Sea.
There were a few people that had carved sand sculptures. Each one had a little carpet in the front so you could throw down money for them.
About every 75 feet you came across two or three Africans selling fake bags, watches, movies, and purses.

And there were a few street performers, like Mary and Joseph here who were human statues. It reminded me of New Orleans.
Check out the sign. WC stands for "water closet." That's what they called most bathrooms in Spain.
Another huge sand sculpture.
The carpet for you to toss money on. Rachel gave this dude a few euros.
A look down the beach.
Dad, check this dude out. He was right on the beach, selling smoked fish. You can see them on a stick to the right of the fire.
Another view of the smoked fish guy zoomed out.
That's an elephant shower.
These were cool. You could rent them and then paddle out on the sea. See the next pic.

A look up the street near where we parked the car.
A roundabout with the anarchy sign spray painted on it.

This was a thing to keep cars from driving on the pedestrian walkway. Rachel thought it was cool 'cause it has Marbella on it.

The last (but technically first) post

2008-01-05T15:45:00.000+03:00

So I'm going to do this backwards, but in the end it will work. You'll see. I'm going to start at the end of our vacation to Spain, Morocco, and Portugal and post towards the beginning. That way they will go in chronological order on this site, unlike that clusterfuck post of the last vacation to the UK.

So here's the deal. Rachel and I went on Christmas vacation for 3 weeks to technically 4 different countries and I'm going to show you every little piece of our vacation, whether you like it or not.
The place that we stayed in was owned by some Spanish guy that was renting to Ian, Carol's husband. He was there for a short time while working for Exxon Mobile. Well, the house had some stuff in it that the owners left behind (I think they stay there in the summer) and hence was "off-limits" to us. Basically it was this cupboard. Notice the Dom Perignon and Johnnie Walker Blue label. Probably 2000 dollars worth of booze in the cabinet.
At least when we stayed there Laurie would cook for us, so it saved us some money (and was nice to have home-cooked meals). Although in this pic Rachel and cooked chili as well, so we had that and seafood pie and curry chicken. Nice.
The world's smallest roundabout--one little palm tree. This was the entrance to the private compound where we stayed in Spain. Notice the Mediterranean Sea in the background.
So the dryer was fucked up. You had to empty this container which pretty much filled up with water after every load you did. I don't know why it just doesn't vent outside like an American dryer, but alas here I am emptying the damn thing.
That's where it goes in.
And that was the washer. Notice how everything is in Spanish. I had to look the words up in the Spanish/English dictionary to figure out how to use the damn thing.
And another weird thing--the door locks. It was a double lock like Bahrain, but if you look closely you can see that at the top and bottom of the door are 3 cylinders that lock as well. Try kicking this door in--or using the tried tested and true method of the drivers license/credit card. Ain't gonna work, buddy.
The kitchen of the flat.
And the other side of the kitchen. For a 2500 dollar a month place the kitchen was pretty tiny.
And the super-rich town of Sotogrande. This was right down the road from our flat, within walking distance. There were high-end restaurants, shops and bars right on the water. And did I mention lots and lots of expensive boats?
Another view down the street. The water is to the right.
Another view.
Walked out on one of the piers to get this shot.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a really, really, really expensive boat. Millions of dollars. It was hands down the largest in the port. You can see how big it is in relation to the boat that's in front of it. That wasn't a small boat either, so you can get some idea of how damn big this thing was.

Looking back toward the businesses.
You can see how close we were to Gibraltar.
Dead center in this pic is the water path that would lead to behind the flat--that's the exit to the sea if we had a boat.
The beach near the entrance to Sotogrande. It, like everything else in that town, was really nice.
Another view.
Taken from the beach--that's the next town over.
There were these really old I guess lighthouses at the entrance to Sotogrande. I really don't know what they were except that they were old and cool. You can see one of them dead center.
And this is the other one. Well, half of the other one.
Like I said, I don't know what they were, but they looked cool.
Looking down the path by the beach.
A cactus by the beach.
Overlooking the beach--those buildings you see in the back is Sotogrande, the pictures above.
Me pumping gas. Most places were pre-pay, so you had to guess how much you needed to fill it up. This was just before returning the car, so I had to fill it up. I guessed 20 euros would do it and it stopped at 19. Well, I wasn't going to leave that euro behind so I topped it up and spilled diesel everywhere. Oh well.
All of the signs in Spain were in Spanish (obviously) except in some tourist spots where they would have English as well. And that was it, except for signs that had to do with the ferry or the town of Algiceras, where the ferry port was--then they had Arabic on them. Obviously it was for the Moroccans, but it was still weird to suddenly see a sign like this one out of nowhere. Reminded me of home (Bahrain.)
Rachel liked this roundabout with the fountain near the flat, so I had to stop so she could get a picture.
And here we are leaving again (that's Gibraltar) on the fucking ferry to go back to fucking Morocco. I did NOT want to go back to that country, but I had no choice because our plane was leaving from Casablanca. This time, our "fast" ferry was running, so we were able to use the tickets that we bought online. Normally, the fast ferry takes an hour or so, but it was windy as hell and the water was really choppy. I knew it was going to take a long time, and I was right. It took over 2 hours to get back. And it got to be so rocky that they wouldn't let you outside on the deck (I assume because they think you may fall overboard). Everybody was puking everywhere, including Rachel who puked in the bathroom. I, on the other hand, am sea strong. It didn't bother me one bit.
You can see we are still in the port--those are cargo ships and the massive machines they use to load and unload them.
Another shot of them...
I thought this was funny. This was the ferry that we were on.
The back of the ferry. That's some dude looking out.
And we finally got to Tangier. This time they didn't have a fancy passenger unload system. We had to go down to where the load the cars and walk off the same ramp the cars use. And on top of that it was fucking pouring.
This is of the Mediterranean on the way. Those waves are bigger than they look.
Off the back of the boat. You can see Gibraltar in the haze.
And the Casablanca airport, waiting. Here's a story for you. So when we got to Tangier off the ferry the plan was to have someone approach us (as the always do) that spoke English to get us a taxi to drive to Casablanca. Originally the plan was to take a train, but after the little situation in Fes and after seeing how shitty most everything in Morocco is we thought we'd just pay a bit more to take a taxi which would provide door to door service. So as we got off the ferry in the rain an old dude asked us if we spoke English and if we needed a taxi, just like my plan. That's where it got ugly. We told him Casablanca (which is about 4 to 5 hours by car from Tangier) and he told us 3000 dirhams. Fuck off buddy. We obviously weren't going to pay that, so I haggled him down to 1700 dirhams, which is still a bit more than we wanted to pay. But we were cold, wet, and Rachel was sick so we hopped in to the mandatory piece of shit Mercedes with the cab driver who spoke only Spanish, French, and Arabic. Lovely. So all went well for the next hour or so as we headed back in the driving rain. All until the car basically stopped running on the highway in the middle of nowhere. So here we are, in a shitty country, with a shitty broken car, us with no cell phone or otherwise way of getting help. Well, luckily the car started back up, but would only run solidly for about 3 minutes then would start chugging, like it was missing. He would shift down to 1st gear, we'd chug along at about 10 miles an hour for a few minutes, then it would clear up. He'd upshift, we'd get up to speed, then the fucking thing would do it again. And again. And again. And the shitty thing was that there was no communication between him and us because he couldn't speak English. Eventually we gathered (through broken Spanish) that he said there was water in the diesel and that's what was causing the problem. So eventually (after about 2 hours of that) we stopped in some shitty village so he could find us another shitty cab to take us the rest of the way, cause lord knows we wanted the hell out of his cab. So he found us another shitty taxi. He paid that taxi driver out of what we gave him to get us the rest of the way to Casablanca. This time, our taxi driver had a buddy who rode with us the whole time. He could speak very little English, but it was better than nothing. So, we get into Casablanca (6 loooong hours from Tangier total) and the driver's buddy asked for the hotel address. Fair enough. He then stops in the middle of the street, flags down a petit taxi and dumps us with him. So then we had to pay this guy to get us the rest of the way. 1742 dirhams and 3 taxis later we were at our hotel. I knew those cocksuckers were going to do that, but what can you do. At that point we were too tired to care. All should have went well at this point, but nooooo. As we sat down for breakfast the next day, I asked for a bottled water. She gave me one with mold all over the label. I then asked for another one, which also had mold all over the label but she tried to pull the label off before giving it to me. Too bad, I already saw it and was pissed. I just wanted the hell out of Morocco. So we walked downstairs to leave. Another problem. We were supposed to go with Kareem to the airport, but not for a few more hours. We wanted to call him because I wanted him to pick us up early so we could go to the Harley shop, but the hotel's phones didn't work (I suspect because they didn't pay the bill.) So we had a hotel guy flag down a taxi to take us to the airport. The taxi he stopped had a lady in the front seat but he kicked her out for us. I felt bad that this taxi driver just kicked out one of his fares (and she looked pissed) for us, but at that point I just wanted to go to the airport. So we get to the airport, get checked in and wait. We were 4 hours early, but I didn't care. At least we were at the airport. Welllllll... to add insult to injury, our plane was delayed 4 hours. FOUR HOURS. The good thing is that we had a 7 hour layover in Dubai, so we made our next flight. But it was like the gods didn't want us to leave that fucking country. I will never, ever go back to Morocco.

A sign at the airport in Morocco. Notice how the sign is in French and Arabic only. Almost all of Morocco was like that.
Our room key to the shitty hotel in Casablanca.
Me waiting at the airport. And I don't look (or feel) very happy at this point.
Our airplane. At first they said the delay was from the dock thing that we board the plane on (which never worked). Then they said it was the wind. It was windy, and when we finally took off we went through some serious turbulence--probably the worst I've ever experienced. Mom would have shit her pants:)

And the last reminder of Morocco. The shitty bathrooms at the airport. The wing that we were waiting in was new, but in the bathrooms you would think it was built 50 years ago. Rachel took this picture--notice the lack of seat. And, while she was waiting in line, some African lady pissed with the door open. The men's restrooms weren't any better either.

Moral of the story. Don't visit Morocco. Do visit Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar.

Although I will say I'm glad I saw Morocco first hand, but I will never, ever go there again. Never.

I know, I know

2008-01-05T15:27:00.000+03:00

Listen, I know it's been months. I know I should be updating this blog frequently, and I know I haven't been.

Well, I just got back from a 3 week vacation and I have lots of pictures to post. Lots. So here we go.

The last Scotland post

2007-10-18T19:42:00.001+03:00

Here she be--the last Scotland post. Should be able to finally get back to normal posts (and what's going on) in the very near future.

First pic--when we went to Edinburg, instead of meters they have a box at the end of each street that you pay to park at. It, in turn, spits out a sticker that you put in your window with the time you are allowed to park. Pretty ingenious, really.
Damien's Car. In the UK it's a Vectra Astra, in Bahrain the same car (which Laurie has) is an OPEL Astra. GM owns the company. That explains it all.
The Harley shop where I bought dad his shirt.
Shift gears. Now we're in St. Andrews. This is the beach right next to the world famous St. Andrew golf course.
Plaque on the beach.
A view of the first hole of the golf course. From my understanding this is one of the oldest courses in the world. I saw a feature on Discovery channel about the course in Bahrain once I got back. I don't golf, but if I did I'm sure I would have wet my pants seeing this course.
Rachel and I near the St. Andrew's beach. The course is directly behind the beach.
And what's left of the really, really old St. Andrew's cathedral. The sun was setting when we drove by this so I really didn't have time to go investigate the ruins. Sure looked cool, though.
Another view.
And what I assume is half of the front of the church.
And the Anstruther fish 'n' chips restaurant. This place was voted best chipshop of the year in 2001 and 2002 in the UK which says alot about the place. The British love their fish and chips, so to get that award would be like getting the American potato salad of the year award or something. When we were waiting in line there was a cutout from the daily paper telling about when Tom Hanks came and visited--it's that good (and world famous.) The place is kinda cool because it is in this little fishing town, right on the coast.

And it was the best fish n chips that I've ever had, for the record.
Proof.
A view looking away from the fish 'n' chip restaurant.
Sorry these pictures are all out of order, but the internet was really fucking fast tonight so I loaded all of the remaining pictures (not really, I've got about another 200 that I'll save.) This is a picture of me and Damien in their backyard the night we had a cookout. Damien is in the RAF (Royal Air Force) and lives in RAF owned property. Hence the barbed wire fence in the back of the yard.
Angela's (Damien's wife's) classroom. Angela went to school with Rachel in Minnesota and met Damien (a Brit) while she was working at MKS in Bahrain. She's got a job teaching at a Scottish school now. They were awesome hosts. Much, much better than Rachel's friend in Kuwait.
And Angela at her desk, doing the teacher thing.
A weird ass car we saw. Thought Ben would enjoy it. (I have more pics if you want, Ben.)
Angela works in Dundee, which is close to their house. This is a view of Dundee (which is up on the hill.)
A view of the bay. It was taken from the same spot as above, just turned about 100 degrees.
And here we are back in Edinburgh (from the same visit in the post below.) This is a view of the streets and our old ass tour guide. For whatever reason I like this photo.
Same thing with this one. This apparently is a church that isn't in use anymore. Kinda looks like it should be in a horror movie with the widows knocked out and shit. Scotland was a really clean and beautiful country--this church was definitely the exception. You would think someone would want to save and do something with this obviously very old building.
A street in Edinburgh.
Parts of Edinburgh were built on top of each other over the years, which is really cool. This is a good example. You can look above this arch to the right and see that there is a street with buildings right on top of other street with buildings.
This is Hollyroot (sp?) park in Edinburgh. You can walk up that peak, if so inclined.
And some more of those damned taxis. In this picture I can count at least 6. And all of them had advertisements on them.
So I mistakenly said in the earlier post that we had been on a specific bus. I was wrong. THIS is the bus we toured the city in.
While we were waiting for the next tour bus, I snapped this picture. Keep in mind it was in the high 60's that day but to these cold-blooded fuckers it was a hot day. (And check out the castle in the background.)

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Now playing: Modest Mouse - We've Got Everything
via FoxyTunes

More Scotland

2007-10-01T22:35:00.001+03:00

So I have this post that I did a while back and forgot to post. Here it is.

One of the places we visited while we were in Scotland was the city of Edinburgh. It's a hell of a lot smaller than London, but cool nonetheless. The building above is in Edinburgh.
We took one of those open-topped busses (which were everywhere--just like London) and got some cool pics. Like this billboard.
In the center of Edinburgh is this massive castle way up on a rock. It is the focal point of the city, and frankly is bad ass.
A side view of the castle.
A pic of the bus we were on.
A look up one of the streets.
A look up the "Royal mile" which leads up to the castle.
Old ass bank.
Some really really old monument in the middle of town. Apparently you can climb to the top of it if you are so inclined. Fuck that.
A street performer. There was some festival going on and there were performers and exhibits everywhere. This dude was from Australia. And by the way--he's on a unicycle, getting ready to juggle a knife, plunger and flaming stick.
And him balancing blocks on his chin.
Higgins--this is why I didn't get you a kilt. They were like 400 bucks.
Another view of the castle.
And another view of the castle.
A look down one of the streets.
That's the railroad bridge that we came across on the train (where I took pics of the big suspension bridge.)
And Damien, driving. On the wrong side of the road.

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Now playing: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Colleen
via FoxyTunes
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Now playing: Tears For Fears - Head Over Heels
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We're goin' on a train ride...

2007-10-01T21:59:00.001+03:00

By far the cheapest way to get from London to Scotland was to take a train (although it still was pricey.) This is a pic of the Scotland skyline. A bit depressing, as is most of that island (in terms of sunshine.) Once again (btw) the pictures are in reverse order.
The tail end of the Forth Road bridge, a suspension bridge in Scotland that rivals the Golden Gate (although not as colorful.) Once we got to Damien's and Angela's (Rachel's friends where we stayed) we went across this bridge everyday. It's impressive.
Another better view of the Forth Road suspension Bridge.
Some town at some train station. And this was a long train--6 hours, with only a dozen or so stops. The U.K. is much larger than I had anticipated.
Sheep. Lots and lots of fucking sheep in this country. I saw more sheep than anything else.

A railroad crossing.

At the King's Cross train station in London.
Another train station shot.
And yet another train station picture.
And one of my all time favorite pictures taken this trip. Like I said before, the English like to drink. Everywhere. At this train station you can buy beer and drink it in public. And of course I had to try it. And look at all that fucking luggage. That's 5 bags plus 2 laptops. We had to cart those motherfuckers all over London AND on the train. That was hands down the worst part of the trip.

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Now playing: Stone Temple Pilots - Meatplow
via FoxyTunes

The rest of the England pics. Finally.

2007-10-01T20:07:00.000+03:00

So I finally got around to posting the rest of the England pictures. Hopefully I can get Scotland done tonight as well and finally get back to current events. I skipped a whole bunch, and I mean a whole bunch--so if you're interested I'll show you the rest when I get back. Anyway, here we go. The above picture is my weight in kilos AND in stones. This scale was at the hotel--it's the first time I've ever seen one with stones. (1 stone=14 pounds) Sweet. I'm fat.
Also taken at the hotel. You had to put your little plastic key in to turn on the lights. Forced energy conservation. Innovative.
These signs were everywhere, at every underground station. The friendly woman announcer on the underground always said "mind the gap." I even bought a shirt that says "mind the gap" that I suppose could be interpreted another way :evil smile:.
Inside of the insanely expensive cab that we took just to say we were in one. Just in case you didn't know what you were in they had an ad for the car inside the car on the seat.
And here's the door inside the cab. What the fuck are all of those buttons for? The only one I could figure out was the window switch.
"I am watching you" and "If you wee on the seat please wipe it with a couple of tissues THANKS" seen inside a shady purse shop's bathroom. Me thinks is funny. Ben shut up.
My goal was to find a traditional English pub while we were in England and have proper fish and chips and a good pint (or two) of English brew. Every time we were in the bus driving around I saw them everywhere. When we were on foot, we saw them nowhere. Eventually we stumbled across this place, which strangely reminded me of Old Bag O' Nails in Columbus. Except this one has been around much, much longer.
And here's an outside shot of the place. The coolest thing about this pub (other than the history) was that most of the draft beers were hand pumped. They would cock the tap handle (like cocking a bb gun) and then beer would flow. Not anything like a modern CO2 tap.
So we took one of the famous open top buses around for a 2 hour tour of the city. Best money I spent in England. I took probably 200 pics of which I'll post maybe 20 here for you. The first one above is Westminster Abbey.
And this is Westminster church, attached to Westminster Abbey.
This is a statue of Winston Churchill. Winston didn't want a statue of him because he didn't want birds shitting on his head. So to rectify that problem they sent an electric current through the statue to deter pigeons. Seems like it's worked. Not. Silly British--if I was a bird, getting shocked probably would literally scare the shit out of me. Seems that's the case.
This is another picture of the oldest thing in London, the ancient Egyptian thing-a-ma-bobby. See earlier post.
This is a memorial to the fire that started in 1666 that burned most of the city. Since then, it's been illegal to build a wooden building in city limits. The fire was started by a candle in a bakery, and if you were to lay this statue down, where the golden top touches the ground is where the original bakery was.
This is St. Paul's Cathedral. If you look way up top near the big dome, you can see people up there. That's one hell of a stair climb.
The first double-sided clock ever. On the Royal Court of Justice.
Downing Street. Impressive, isn't it?
Picadilly Circus. Basically a shopping area owned by the Queen. Easy way to tell if she owns the land you're on--look at the lightposts, if there's a crown on it, she owns the ground you're on, homie.
Bahrain's flag. Thought that was interesting.
The English like to drink. Alot. And they allow it in public. Well, for the most part anyway. Check the white sign out. And by the way, 500 pounds is a 1000 bucks.
Gaymers. As good as it gets.

I suspect that's far from the truth.
Traditional red telephone booths.
The top of the open top bus where we were sitting. The guide is the dude in the maroon jacket and black hat. He was interesting, and very informative.
The outside of the bus we were in.
An old ass Underground Station.
St. John's Wood Underground station, where you get on/off for Abbey Road.
These reminders were everywhere, I suppose for us Americans who drive on the CORRECT side of the road.

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Abbey Road

2007-09-16T22:31:00.001+03:00

And here it is. The one thing I absolutely had to do on my London trip. This is it. Although it could have used a bit of a painting.
Outside of Abbey Road Studios (where hundreds of records have been made, up until this very day) is a wall that is painted white that you can sign. And sign we did. Abbey Road Studios is about 40 feet from that famous crosswalk above.
Proof. That white house in the background is Abbey Road Studios. You can see the sign above the door. And if I looked really hard, I could see the receptionist in the window to the right of the door with "Abbey Road Studios" above her on the wall in gold.
Right there, front and center. Our mark will forever be on the Abbey Road wall.

Until they give it another paint job.
Rachel did the duties. I really like this picture.
A picture of a part of the wall.
Rachel crossing. It is really harder than you would think to get the pose right. And it didn't help that this road was really, really busy. You had to stand out in traffic to get a decent picture.
There were a couple German guys there trying to do their best. I thought it was funny as hell, even though they were doing a better job than us.
It's hard. Trust me.
And I thank Rachel for sacrificing her life out in the middle of the street to get these.
A look just up from the crosswalk. This is the beginning of Abbey Road. You can see how busy the street is as well.

Mikey--I have more pics, I'll show you when I come home. It's just a pain in the ass to load them all.

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Pay to piss, please.

2007-09-16T22:21:00.000+03:00

This pic was taken on our way back to the hotel. The commuter trains that you would use to go to any of the outlying suburbs have drink carts that come by every few minutes with (you guessed it) brewskis. Of course I had to buy one (or two) and say I've had a beer on a train in London. Awesome.

What wasn't so awesome was this bathroom at the train station. Notice the sign. You had to pay 2o pence (40 cents) to piss. What the fuck? And they even had change machines next to the bathroom. Amazing.

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Tower of London

2007-09-16T21:26:00.001+03:00

I confess. I wish I knew more about British history before I went to England. I'm sure if I had known more, I would have appreciated the Tower of London more. It's the number one tourist spot in London, and with good reason. This castle/fortress/prison/place of execution has more history then I've ever seen in my life. The newest part is over 800 years old, and the buildings contain more history than one could probably get in a week. It really is an amazing place, somewhere I'll visit again if I ever go back to London.Yes, the Tower of London has the crown jewels. Yes, I saw them. No, I could not take pictures. The crowns I saw are probably the single most expensive things I've ever seen in my life. Holy fucking shit were they cool. There were probably about a dozen crowns, amongst many, many other diamond studded objects. Really, really amazing.
Me, listening to an audio recording of something. We had these headsets to guide us along. We could have gone with a live guide, known as a "beefeater" but they had huge crowds following them and it was really hard to hear what they were saying.
That has to weigh a ton. This picture (and the next couple) were taken inside one of the many, many buildings in the Tower. This particular building housed the armory.
See?
Cool.
In one of the courtyards. You can see how close the Tower Bridge is in the background.
The sight of many executions. See the next sign for who.

Rumor has it if those two falcons ever leave, the tower will fall. Good thing they clipped those bastards' wings. Note the armed guard to the left watching the birds. That's his only job.
Traitor's gate. Read.
Some cannons.
A picture of traitor's gate. You will know what this is if you read above.
Just inside the Tower. Look at all the people. They were everywhere in London. Everywhere.
So I realized I don't have a forward facing picture of a beefeater. So enjoy this one.
The entry to the Tower.
Looking at the walls to the Tower and what used to be a moat.
Read.

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River Thames Cruise

2007-09-16T20:27:00.000+03:00

We bought this "London Pass" which got us all kinds of free shit (thank god because London is fucking expensive) including a free river cruise on the Thames, right through downtown London. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip one because I like water and two it is a unique way to see the city. Although it seems like hundreds of other people had the same idea. The river was clogged with big sight-seeing boats, just like the streets are clogged with the huge double-decker sight-seer buses. Anyway, here we go (in reverse chronological order, I've gotten pretty good at fucking up the order of pictures.)
This is the HMS Belfast, apparently a floating Naval museum. We didn't go.
Remind you of something? Looks alot like the lift bridge back home. I'd be willing to bet this one is older.

The newer part of London. These buildings are all built on reclaimed docks.
I thought this building was cool. Apparently it was designed so that every flat in the building would have a view of the Thames.
Part of the Tower Bridge.
A close-up of the Tower Bridge. The lower center part (where the boat is) splits in the middle and raises for larger boats. The upper part is so pedestrians can cross even when bridge is up.
A farther away view of Tower Bridge. Notice the other tour boats.
The Tower of London. If you look carefully, you can see on the wall "Entry to the Traitor's Gate." That's where they used to bring in the prisoners. Long, long history on that building.
So as we were going under this bridge the guide announced that it was "the" London Bridge. As in "London Bridge is falling down" London Bridge. I don't have another picture of it other than this one because it looked like any concrete freeway bridge you'd see in the states, and I wasn't given time to take a photo. Apparently after it fell they thought they'd build a plain Jane bridge. I don't know why, because the rest of the bridges through this area are all pretty bad ass.
See what I mean about better bridges?
This is the "wibbly wobbly" pedestrian bridge installed in 2000. A weird looking pedestrian bridge that sways when you're on it. Count me out of crossing that bad boy.
Some supports for a long lost bridge??
This is the oldest thing in London. This is an ancient Egyptian obelesque (sp?) complete with hieroglyphics given to the city by Egypt as a gift god knows when.
Another cool bridge.
The open topped, double decker boat we were on.
Another shot of the boat that we cruised the river on.

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London eye is london expensive...

2007-09-16T20:12:00.000+03:00

So I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but school has started and I've been really busy. I've got 160 students, and the beginning of the year is always pretty hectic (which means I need lots of sleep) since I've got to get my room together, get to know the kids, establish rules, etc. But, the first couple weeks have gone off without much of a hitch and things seem to be getting into a routine. And, it's now Ramadan--WHICH SUCKS ASS. For those that don't remember, Ramadan is the holy month for Muslims. They fast during the day, which means I'm not allowed to eat in front of anyone during daylight hours. It's even illegal to eat or drink in public. So that means nothing is open until after the sun goes down. Oh yeah, and you can't go get a beer anywhere during the month--even after sundown. I hate Ramadan.

Anyway, these are pics taken opposite of the Houses of Parliament. The really big merry-go-round is the London Eye. I wanted to go on it because on a non-cloudy day you're supposed to be able to see for 25 miles. Well, once I found out it was going to be 30 bucks a head I said screw that. The building next to the London Eye used to be the city hall.

And Grandpa--I hope you get better. Love ya!
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Big Ben is really.... big.

2007-09-03T18:41:00.000+03:00

These are pictures of Big Ben (which wasn't chiming due to maintenance--the first time in over 50 years). Although Big Ben was cool, the actual building that it's connected to (Houses of Parliament) is even more bad ass. I've got some pictures of it from the river later on.
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Changing of the guard

2007-08-31T19:53:00.000+03:00

The first thing we did (after the Hard Rock visit the night prior) was head off to see the changing of the guard. HOLY SHIT were there a lot of people! In the end, we never got close enough to see the actual changing which is performed behind that gate. Above is Buckingham Palace.
This is the entrance to the royal gardens, which were next to the palace.
This is the English band that marched into the palace. I think the changing of the guard had something to do with these guys.
There was a huge monument in the middle of the roundabout in front of the palace. Rachel asked someone to take our pic.
This was taken with my hand way up in the air so I could get over people's heads. You can see the band marching in through the gate.
A motorcycle cop protecting the band.

Palace garden gate.

I like this one. People everywhere, except on the road. The cops shuffled you off real fast if you stepped out onto the street.
As close as we could come to the fence.
One of the gates to the palace.
The monument in the center of the roundabout.
This was on the way to the palace. "Balls Brothers."

And a double decker bus or two thrown in for good measure.

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The Vault

2007-08-31T19:24:00.001+03:00

So next door to the Hard Rock was the merchandise store, which had a pretty fucking sweet "vault" downstairs. It apparently at one point was where the Queen housed the crown jewels (which I also saw, but not here). Hard Rock had turned it into a FREE mini-rock museum. The dude that showed us the room even allowed me to pick up Jon Bon Jovi's guitar for a pic. Pretty sweet if you ask me. Also check out the pics of Eddie Vedder's guitar with the handwritten lyrics on it.

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First view of London

2007-08-31T19:16:00.000+03:00

So even though we were tired as hell, the first night we headed into the city to go to the original Hard Rock Cafe. It immediately became clear why our hotel was so cheap. It took us close to two hours to get into London. We stayed in East Sussex which is apparently no where near the city. We had to take the shuttle from the hotel to the airport, then we had to take a train from the airport to the city. Then we had to take an underground to get where we needed to go. A pain in the ass for sure. This pic above is when we first exited the underground. I believe it's the Ritz Hotel.

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Welcome, mate!

2007-08-28T19:17:00.000+03:00

Getting to England wasn't that much of a pain once we got through security at Minneapolis. The flight was direct, which was cool. However, once we got to passport control at London-Gatwick, we were greeted to about a 2 hour line. They seem to lack the efficiency of the states, but oh well. So anyway, we got our luggage and headed outside to find where our hotel was supposed to pick us up at. This is a pic of me, tired as hell, waiting in a wheelchair (save the fat jokes, fuckers) with our pile of luggage.

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Ah, same 'ol shit again...

2007-08-27T19:34:00.001+03:00

And I'm back. Vacation was cool, albeit pretty normal when I was home. I only made it to Columbus 3 times for a combined total of about 4 days. I would have liked to spend more time there, but I know I would have started rolling through the dough which I needed to save for London. So, I spent most of the time in 'bula working on the house and exchanging torrents with my bro. As of right now, I'm up to 47,012 songs which is 131 consecutive days and a whopping 263.75 gigabytes. Guess that 320 I bought is gonna fill up fast.

Anyway, went to Minnesota to visit Rachel's family on the way back to Bahrain. Minnesota was cool, not much different than I expected. Although I did see the collapsed I-35W bridge from the airplane as we were descending. That was kinda cool in a morbid sort of way. Back to the story. When I went through security in Cleveland, I noticed they had highlighted a part of my boarding pass that said "SSSS" and as I was wondering what that meant they pulled me out of line for the "extra special search" that I always seem to get. If you follow my blog you know they got my ass at all 3 airports coming to Bahrain the first time, so I've kinda become accustomed to it. The strange thing is that I've never been pulled out of line when I'm with Rachel. That all changed as we were leaving Minnesota. Sure as shit, when we got our boarding passes, they were labeled with "SSSS," and surprise surprise we got pulled out of line. Rachel's never had the special search so it was all new to her, but not to me. They searched us, opened our bags, and swabbed everything with the chemical pads. I love the TSA. The picture above is of the boarding pass after they cleared us. You can see the clearance stamps on them.

So after that fiasco, we took off to London for three days. The school pays for the trip home every summer, so we figured we'd mooch 'em for a free ticket to London. London was freakin' sweet, but fucking (and that's an understatement) EXPENSIVE. I knew it was going to be pricey going in, but not nearly as much as it really was. Thank god we only spent 3 days there. I'll post pictures on here in the next week or two, in more detail. Then we took a train to Scotland to visit a college friend of Rachel's who teaches in Scotland. Holy shit was that a fiasco riding the train--but once again, I'll get into that later in more detail. Scotland was cool but cold as hell. As cold as I was I appreciated the shivering, because that's the coldest I've been in a year, and probably will be for who knows how long. As I type this it's 7:12 at night and 95 degrees with 70% humidity.

So here I sit in Bahrain, after about 3 days of orientation at school. Classes start Sunday, and things are quite different here now. Our old principal decided to bail on us without telling anyone (and went so far as to ignore everyone's emails) so they had to hire a new one at the last minute. The good news is that she seems pretty cool. The bad news is that she has no idea really of how the school operates (although you can't blame her) so it will be an interesting beginning of the year.

As I can get new pics to load I'll post more. Peace from the middle east (for now).
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Super K, Arab Style

2007-08-01T19:31:00.001+03:00

Spec-mutherfucking-tacular! The first night I was home Mikey thought it would be funny to go to KMart to get beer in his thobe. The pictures are enough, I really don't have to say anything:)

When we were leaving, a man behind us was spouting off all kinds of shit to which his wife replied "maybe they're having a toga party."

HAHAHAHAHA!

Back to the USA

2007-08-01T19:21:00.000+03:00

So I know I've been home for the better part of two months and I haven't posted anything. Fuck off. I'm enjoying my vacation. And the name of the blog is Byron in Bahrain not Byron back Home. But I've gotten some really good pictures since I've been back, and I feel the need to post them. Plus I've finally become bored. Since the pics are somewhat associated with Bahrain (Mikey's in a man-dress I've picked up for him out there) I'm going to post some here.

So the first thing Mikey did when I got home was don the thobe and rock it. I thought these pics were pretty funny... but not as funny as what happened later that night....

Road construction, Arab style....

2007-06-14T21:53:00.000+03:00

I took these photos at the same time as the last post where we were at the beach. This was a section of road that they were changing from a two lane to a four lane with a medium. What you are looking at is fucked up Arab road construction, and if you don't like this post too bad. It's for my dad.

Straight ahead is a roundabout. In the middle of a construction zone. Nice.

I was so confused navigating this. And the signs don't help either--look at the triangle one straight ahead. What the fuck is that? Does the road just end? No merge?

Anyway, 2 more days of school left (the 19th's the last day) then a bunch of bullshit nothing admin days, then off I go. I can't wait to go back home. I'm arriving in Columbus at 11:53 am on the 28th. Higgins, Nate, Mikey, all of you better be there!

Love shack, baby love shack... "HEY! TURN THAT SHIT DOWN!"

2007-06-12T17:23:00.000+03:00

Made a trip out to the beach (part of the less than 10% of the coastline that isn't owned by the royal family--and thus open to the public) for shits and giggles the other day. The picture above is of some of these "love shacks" that they have positioned along the beach. I assume they are for families so they can "disrobe" i.e. take off the abaya. However, when you get up close to these things they are dilapidated pieces of shit with gaps like 8 inches wide between boards which seems absolutely pointless. Oh well.
And this is the mosque across the road from the beach. Apparently Islamic code mandates that there must be a mosque within walking distance of any Muslim, and this one must serve the beach. What was funny was that this particular day (and every day, now) it was well over 120 outside with NO ONE around. Hell, look around the mosque. Do you see any buildings? Hell, ANY sign of civilization? Made me chuckle, that's all. I guess this would be like building a big church in the middle of the woods out in the middle of a boyscout camp that is only active one month out of the year.
Another good shot of the mosque with jack shit around.

And the sign at the beach (with one of the love shacks in the background.) I would like to note that this is about as far away as you can get from the city on the island (with the exception of one other place) and on a heavy traffic day only takes about 15 minutes to get here.

Pretty pictures and rants, all in one!

2007-06-09T20:33:00.000+03:00

Rachel and I went over to a fellow teacher's place the other day for some brews, bbq, and music swapping. Mike Hockley is a middle school math teacher from Wisconsin. He's into motorcycles, beer, and classic rock. My type of guy. I only wish I would have met his ass earlier this year. Anyway, he lives in an apartment building in Juffair, the same part of town I live in. Juffair is riddled with high rises, but it's also home to the Grand Mosque, the biggest mosque on the island. We went up on his roof to cook on the grill (that's him above) and I got some bad ass photos while I was up there. He lives across the street from the Grand Mosque, and I got some sweet photos.
But first, a few of the roof. This is looking from the same spot I took the picture above, except a bit to my left. This building stays true to form with the rest of them in Juffair with the pool on the roof. Rachel's just chillin'.
Taken from the back side of the pool. You can start to see the huge ass neon sign above Mike.
And there she be. That's the name of his building--although we're a long way away from Dallas, cowboy.

This is standing at the edge of the pool looking to right. You can see the low tide with the boats normally floating shored up on the beach. Where the cars are parked is normally where the water reaches.
And this is looking left towards Juffair.
This is the new main library under construction. Like all Arab things, it's gaudy (and fucking huge). I need to get a front on view so you can see the obvious knock-off design of the Sydney opera house.
Another shot of Juffair...

And these are my time progression shots of the Grand mosque. I should flip the order of these, but I'm lazy. You'll get the idea.

This one was taken without using my zoom, to give you an idea of where his building was.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm gonna vent about today. So last Thursday I gave my last test to 6 different classes. Well, one of my 4th grade girls who is rather intelligent but highly annoying (and a behavioral issue) decided to cheat. To give you a background about this culture--I've read in the paper since I've been out here about cheating at the high school and collegiate level. It's incredibly rampant here. And in most cases, these kids seem to be proud of beating the system. They tell how they hide answers in the abaya (black dress) sleeves, in the head scarf, hell some even put in a bluetooth piece that is completely covered by either the hijab or the towel the men wear. In fact, when I went to complain about this girl cheating (more on that in a minute) to Janet (the principal), she told me that just that morning one of the Arabic staff's daughters at the university came into Janet's office boasting about how she had just cheated on one of her final exams. That's how bad cheating is in this society. Anyway. I was giving a test, and when they finish I normally give them a piece of paper and tell them to keep busy (draw, whatever.) Well, this specific girl decided to write the answers on this paper and give them to her friend who was sitting two desks away. I caught them red-handed, and during the course of my discipline cycle I found out that Laurie (this girl's English teacher) had caught them cheating in her class just 2 periods prior. Long story short, this A+ girl got a 0, as did her friend. So today her dad comes to see me after school, pulls me aside and begins to talk to me. He asks me what her final grade is and I tell him with that zero it comes out to a B. He tells me that's not her level--and get this--proceeds to tell me "so you're just threatening her with a B. She'll get her report card when school's done and she'll have an A+--like SURPRISE!" I looked at this asshole in disbelief and said "no, she's getting a B. She cheated, that's what her grade will be!" He says "no, it WILL be an A." Fuck you, buddy. Your girl is getting a B--and you know what, if that one B devastates her to the point that she learns her lesson and never cheats again then I've made a difference. This guy kept going, but I'll spare you the details. I just can't believe he had the balls to tell me that essentially I MUST give his daughter an A. Fuck you. It doesn't work like that where I come from--you cheat, you suffer the consequences. Those are American ideals. If you don't like them, send your precious to a private Arab school. Oh wait. They can't get into decent colleges if they go to those. So go fuck yourself, buddy.

Thank god there are only 2 weeks left...

18 and counting...

2007-06-09T20:26:00.000+03:00

I only have 18 days left on the island and can't wait to go home. Classes end the 19th, but the last day for grading was last Thursday. So somehow I've gotta keep the kids entertained (read: teach and pretend like the grades still count) for just over a week. Then they have a shitload of stuff you have to do before you can get your paycheck--turn in supplies/books, create yearly plans for next year, etc. A royal pain the ass, but it should make that last week when we don't have kids go by a bit faster.

And I've been trying to keep up on my blog, but the internet here is incredibly testy and it is a real fucking pain to load pictures. I'll try two or three times to load a photo then get pissed ('cause each time it takes 5 minutes or so before it lets me know it timed out) and give up. I'll be home soon and show you all pictures and tell stories in person anyway.

I'll be in Columbus on the 28th--that night we're going out. Get ready for the Byro...

That explains why I didn't get drunk....

2007-06-09T18:52:00.000+03:00

And another funny sign. Rachel noticed this while we were sitting at a red light--I've never seen anyone advertise for something quite like this. They don't tell you what it is, but they sure as hell let you know it doesn't contain alcohol. I assume it's supposed to be a fruity Zima type drink--sans alcohol. I wouldn't have guessed this contained booze to begin with if I saw it in a store (especially since you have to buy alcohol from the 'special' stores), but I'm sure glad the sign let me know that I wouldn't get buzzed from drinking Summer Freez.

Collage?

2007-06-09T18:07:00.000+03:00

And this sign could start to explain why most Arabs seem to be dumb shits. All this time I was blaming the culture, the lack of proper parenting, etc when all along it appears the root of this problem exists in the educational system itself!

I hope this was just a typo. I'll laugh my ass off if that actually is the name of the college. This sign caught my eye as Rachel and I were driving around last weekend. Where ever there is construction happening, be it residential, commercial, whatever they have a sign like this explaining exactly what is being built. They're actually a good idea--I've driven past lots of things back in the states and wondered what the hell they were building. Here they tell you.

Good idea, bad spelling.

JJ's--the best place in town to find drunk navy guys... and a damn good ham sandwich

2007-05-29T19:56:00.001+03:00

These are a couple shots of JJ's, an Irish bar that we frequent after work on Thursday (our Friday). It's a cool joint in that it's authentic--all brought in from Ireland and reassembled. Kinda like that place on 5th Ave in Columbus. But this is more authentic, because it's filled with drunk British and Irish guys, not full of preppy fucks like back home. However, prior to a security guard getting shot by a mysterious person (some say Saudi, some say royal family, some say American Navy because guns are not available here) this place used to be full of drunk navy assholes. But since the shooting (which actually happened next door at a different bar) it's been off-limits to them and has been extremely nice for me. As we all know I can't stand navy guys so the place is full now of mostly British and eastern Europeans, which is fine with me. The main reason we go here is not for the beer (I know what you're saying 'yeah, right') but for the ham and cheese baguette. This is one of the only places on the island that you can get pork products off of a menu, and it's damn good. Damn good.

I was lucky to get these shots (which don't do the place justice) because for whatever reason you're not allowed to take pictures in most bars on the island. I'm not sure why that is. I have a feeling it's because there are Muslims drinking (which is a huge no-no) in some of them and they don't want any photographic evidence. But JJ's won't allow anybody in the bar who's wearing any type of Muslim get-up (man-dresses, etc), and quite honestly I rarely see Arabs in there. Back home, I hate discrimination. Here--well, sometimes it's not so bad being a non-Arab:)

Cargo port

2007-05-29T19:31:00.001+03:00

These are some cargo lifters (or whatever they're called) near one of the ports that I saw the other week and thought would make a good photo. You can see how tall those things actually are by looking at that car barely visible to the left of the palm tree. Those bad boys are how I'm getting my Clio to the states...

Who reads signs anyway...

2007-05-29T19:07:00.001+03:00

This one is for dad. Poor sign maintenance exists all over the world...

Middle Eastern Security System

2007-05-29T18:14:00.000+03:00

I don't know if I've posted about walls like this before, but here ya go again. I took this photo near the school--I wouldn't want to try and climb this wall, that's for damn sure. That's a pretty fuckin' mean wall--and cheap to build to boot...

And by the way, I'm home in less than a month. WHOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

The best Filipino cover band in town

2007-05-20T19:57:00.001+03:00

Is now gone. These photos were taken at F1, which is a club that has a Filipino cover band called Big Night Out. At first, I laughed my ass off because it was really amusing me to see a bunch of Asians rock out to Nirvana. But soon I learned my options were limited as far as live music is concerned, so I grew to enjoy watching these guys. But as is the case with all expats on the island, contracts are limited. In the case of these guys they were only here for 6 months. They will be missed.
Pop (the lead singer) rockin' out. I have some bad ass video of these guys, but for whatever reason youtube is being a bitch. You'll just have to wait until I come home to see it.
Another good shot of Pop and AJ (the girl.)
Jenn and AJ--of the two, Jenn (the one with the mic) was the better singer, but AJ was there for the boys to look at (if you know what I mean.)

And me an' Pop.

You can show all the blood and gore you want, but don't show a woman's ass...

2007-05-19T17:22:00.000+03:00

Oh no. Hell no. Not here. Check this out--I went to one of the malls last weekend, and they were having a world press photo exhibit. There were all these posters just like the one above scattered across the mall with award-winning photos from news photographers all over the world like the New York Times, Time Magazine, etc. All was well and good until I ran across this set of photographs. They didn't look out of the ordinary until this (below) caught my eye...
Someone had taken paper and blocked out this woman's bikini-clad ass. And when someone pulled that off, someone else apparently used a marker to attempt to black it out. Amazing. And what amazed me even more was that many of these photos were extremely gory, to the point of making one ill--but no one blocked those out with a black magic marker. Let me show you a few...
Here's a nice collage of death and smoke...
And better yet how about a dead baby in a casket?

And if that wasn't enough how about a guy whose arm has been blown off?

It's amazing. Arabs don't give two shits about bad language or about blood and gore. What they do care about is sex, and any hint of it. The photo of that woman was anything but sexual, but yet these narrow minded fucks saw just that--sex.

I live at 6167 Shaikh Abdulla Bin Khalid Al-Khalifa Ave.

2007-05-19T17:04:00.000+03:00

And I'm not joking about that road name. Here's proof. Either the streets here are numbered (i.e. Road 2834) or have insanely long names like this. Try saying this name every time you order food...

And FYI, "Bin" means "son of." And since last names are very important to these people, they always keep an important family name. In this case literally this guy's name is Shaikh (which is a royal title, like King but lesser) Abdulla, son of Khalid who was an Al-Khalifa (the ruling family.)

Romeo and Juliet, a la 4th grade Arabic kids style

2007-05-19T15:57:00.000+03:00

The 4th grade (my homeroom) went on the field trip on one day (see next post) and the other day the 5th graders went. And since I teach both grades, on the off day we had a self contained class because our schedules are intertwined. Did you catch that? Anyway, Rachel and Laurie came up with the idea to do plays with the kids. So after a week of practicing, it was show time. This is me acting with some of Rachel's kids because one of the kids in the play didn't show up. I have a great video of this, but since the internet's so fucking slow you don't get to see it. We were doing a knock-off of the Emperor's New Clothes, but instead of being naked he's bald--hence the green swim cap. Nice.
Here are all the 4th graders in the gym waving at me taking a picture, with Rachel playing crowd control in the back.
And me in full-on action playing my famous geography game after the plays were over.
I like this shot because it shows three different color hijabs--blue, white, and orange.

And finally Laurie helping one of her kids with his lines. Nice TV, Ahmed.

Field Trips Suck, But Not As Bad As A Normal School Day. Let's Go On A Fieldtrip!!

2007-05-19T14:35:00.001+03:00

We took the kids the other week to the King Tut exhibit at the Bahrain National Museum. This is the first time that this exhibit (showing shit from his tomb) has been outside of Egypt, and Bahrain is the only slated stop in the Middle East. So I was fairly excited to go, but not too excited. I have learned that Arabs can really let you down, so in order not to get pissed that the exhibit would be too small or shitty I tried to keep my excitement to a minimum. And lo and behold, the exhibit pretty much sucked. They had enough artifacts to fill about one room, but managed to fill up about 5 by creating a maze that you had to navigate through to get to the next artifact. A royal waste of time, if you ask me. At least I can say I've seen it, though.
This is Rachel's class, at the entrance to the exhibit. They wouldn't allow photography, so I didn't get many pictures. Just inside of this entrance is a guard with an AK-47 that one of my kids thought would be funny to grab as we walked in. I got this look of terror on my face when I saw my kid do it, but to my surprise the guard just laughed. Thank god. That could have been ugly.
After the King Tut bit, we decided to take the kids to a park so they could play some football or whatever on real grass (which is a rarity here.) Luckily, I had the job of going to get the food for them at McDonalds, so I didn't have to ride in one of these cramped busses. Rachel did, though, and got this shot of some of the kids.
Here's the park where we took the kids. You can see a shitload of them off in the distance. And here's me, hot and tired camped out on the ground. I was supposed to be securing the perimeter, but in reality I was just securing my water bottle and entertaining the girls.

When that veil is really crampin' your eatin'

2007-05-19T14:26:00.001+03:00

You can head behind one of these curtained booths, just for that very purpose! This picture was taken at Johnny Carino's, an American Italian joint. Many of the restaurants have these booths that the veiled women can go into to take it off and eat without other wicked, non-family member men seeing them. This lady didn't have the curtain closed, but the booth next to her which was across the isle from us did. I didn't think that this lady was a ninja, but when they got up to leave she put on her veil. Interesting. I don't know why she didn't close the curtain. Maybe she's only a half-ninja. Also, something I didn't catch until I posted this picture is that there is a window into the next booth--so maybe the general population can't see you eat with the curtain closed, but your neighbor in the next booth most certainly can. I just shake my head sometimes...

A Shitter, A Shower, A Sink--All In A port-a-potty!

2007-05-19T13:42:00.000+03:00

You'll see what I'm talking about in a minute. Josh had a get together the other weekend at my old place so I decided to stop by for a bit. This is a photo of Beth, Kate, and Josh (flipping me the bird) on his couch.
And of course, my favorite Indian friend Shamsu was there. The one thing I really miss about that place is him, so it was good to shoot the shit in broken English for a few hours with him. He had this little lighted ball that he was playing with and I manged to get this (what I consider) great picture of him.
And then one of the roommates, past and present. Doug (present), Shamsu and Josh (past). Another great photo, if I do say so myself.
Josh took me up to the roof to show me his satellite dish that flew off the roof a week prior during a sandstorm. Scott and Josh managed to salvage it and put it back up on the roof (notice the huge dent) and amazingly it still works.

So when I lived in the building Shamsu, who lives in what is basically the elevator access room, took shits and showers in whatever flat happened to be empty. But now that the flats are all full, Adel put this little contraption on the roof for him. Basically it's a port-a-potty with a hole in the floor, a shower head, and a sink. Shit, shower, and shave in a 3ftx3ft box! Oh yeah, check out the electrical connection--remember, that's 220 they use here. Unbelievable....
And finally this is what we encountered as we were leaving the party. That greenish Focus is Kates (who drove), and it happened to be blocked in by a guy who abandoned his car with the 4 ways on and a scooter (that had the spare tire tied on). I love this country.

Adding chaos to a clusterfuck

2007-05-19T08:24:00.000+03:00

So I'm going to try a new way of posting . Get this--instead of me telling you about the photos way AFTER I post it, I'll tell you directly underneath the picture!! What a novel concept! So here we go. The other week some asshole from the Khalifa ruling family was supposedly going to visit the school on some sort of "ruling family connect with the common people" pledge. Lovely. Anyway, the guy that was going to show up was a dude named Shaikh Nasser, who is the son of the King or something to that effect. A far cousin, a bastard son, a son from a tenth wife, I don't know who the hell he was (or really give a shit). Can you tell I'm pissed about this? Arabs are all about show, and show we did. The higher ups in the school spent a week hanging fresh new Bahrain flags everywhere, repainting walls, basically candy-coating the school for this dude. Really they were just shy of actually sucking his dick. Our part in this whole get up was to have the 4th and 5th grade kids line up in a tunnel for him to walk through, reminiscent of the one I used to do in band in high school for the football team at the Friday night game. And if this whole ass kissing wasn't enough, the high school was having it's "global village" at the time. This "global village" really was just a bunch of booths set up that the high schoolers had food and various cultural doo dads from various countries. Basically it added chaos to a clusterfuck. This is that dude who's dick the school was sucking. I really like the fact that he's got a satchel made of bullets in a country where guns are illegal. Amusing. That corridor directly ahead is where we were to line up the kids.
The police presence was amazing, the day before this little shebang they came through and inspected the area for sniper points. Nice.

Rachel with some of her girls in the "tunnel."
Laurie with some of her hellions again in the "tunnel."
A good shot of the tunnel. The stairs I'm standing on to take this photo was in the flightpath for this Shaikh dude on the way to the auditorium. The kids in this photo were lucky because they were in the shade, a good majority of them were actually outside in the 90 degree plus heat. And if that wasn't bad enough, they brought us over here to stand over an hour before the scheduled visit time. And if experience has taught me anything over here it's that Arabs ARE NOT punctual people. True to form, this cocksucker was over 25 minutes late. By the time he actually walked through this tunnel, we had 3 girls pass out. And I'm talking THUMP on the concrete pass out--like a sack of potatoes. I was freaking out. I don't know what the hell to do with a passed out 9 year old! One of them Rachel picked up and rushed over to the administrators office to get her water and help--and get this---THEY WOULDN'T LET HER IN EVEN WITH A PASSED OUT CHILD IN HER ARMS!!! Fuckers!! Arabs are all fuckers. Every last one of them. They are so concerned with their goddamn image that they denied an unconscious child access to water and help (because that's were they were preparing the food and whatnot for this cocksucker). Luckily the doctor saw Rachel and was able to help her, but that is still one of the most fucked up things I've seen out here. Now you would assume that the first kid that passed out would have been an indicator to wrap things up and get these kids back into the AC and some water--but no, we stood outside the whole time. Kids were in tears because their friends were passing out left and right. Amazing.
Ok. Calm down Byron. This is our friend Kate in her China get-up. She was helping some of her students with the China booth in the global village and decided to look the part. Little fan and all.
A shot of the global village sign before I assembled the poor souls (kids) in the tunnel.
I'm not. Fuck you, Shaikh Nasser. I don't give a shit who you are, especially if you think you're shit doesn't stink because you were lucky enough to be born into a rich ruling family that made themselves that way by force. (And thank God this blog is private:)
The stage that someone (I don't know who) was planning on dancing on.

This is Naiim, a 5th grade language teacher from South Africa. He's a good guy and is loaded with cool stories--athough I find his accent extremely heavy and hard to understand sometimes, his stories (what I can understand of them) are bad ass.
Here are the administrators and owners of the school getting their panties in a bunch because this dude is finally here (25 minutes late, did I mention that?)
And here he his. Whoopdie fucking doo.
This is Shaikh Nasser and his posse going up the stairs. I took this picture namely because you can see all the different types of thobes (all of which are ceremonial except for the standard white one.)
There's that stage in action, after the Shaikh passed. Something interesting that I didn't catch until I was loading this photo was the banner that said "Welcome to Bahrain" at the top of the stage. Isn't this fucker FROM Bahrain? Last I checked, he was part of the ruling family of Bahrain--why the hell would you welcome him to a country that his family rules? Arabs, besides being full of themselves, are sometimes not the brightest people around either.
This guy emerged from the admin office where Rachel tried to take the passed out little girl. This Indian was hauling ass through the crowd, I'm glad this picture came out. You can see how pretentious this whole fucking thing was.
This is on the way back, you can see the security associated with this dickwad. I like how one is talking to Khalid towards the back of the line.
And the final picture was taken after I finally got my kids back to my room. It was supposed to be reading time, but they were so worn out that Mona and Noora were passed out right in front of me. I totally understood.

Cook it at least 165 degrees F. What the hell is F?

2007-05-15T18:59:00.000+03:00

Last I checked, all the stoves in this country use Celsius. So how the hell are you going to reheat your Applebees? Pull out your calculator and do the conversion, I guess. And oh yeah, don't forget the "FDA" recommendation.

At least I know my Applebees is still American, even way over here in the Middle East:)

Fuck It Ahmed, FEATURE!

2007-05-14T20:06:00.000+03:00

The latest fuck it Ahmed, it was a piece of shit anyway feature post is brought to you by the smashed-ass Mercedes that has been sitting like this down the street from my house for about 2 weeks. For around 4 days the license plate light was on, now the battery finally died and someone managed to pop the trunk up since I took this photo. Ah, I love this country.

Hotel Rooms? Fuck that, rent a flat!

2007-05-14T19:32:00.000+03:00

So some of the high-rise apartment buildings are quite infamous for renting out flats to the "tourists" here on a per-night basis. The tourists here generally aren't from other parts of the world, but rather from the GCC countries (Gulf Cooperation Council). They come here from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, U.A.E., etc via the King Fahad Causeway which connects Bahrain with Saudi. The officials claim most of them come over with families, but in reality it's mostly single men that come here for the booze and hookers. They raise all kinds of hell over the weekend (official stats are that over a half million cars come over the bridge on the weekends) and then go back home, only to do it all over again next weekend. Our landlord refuses to rent out flats to these hell raisers (thank god) but the building across the street apparently welcomes these drunk Arab fucks (did I mention I hate Saudis the most?) with open arms. I took this photo the other morning as I was pulling out of my car park (I'm turning British.) Notice not one of these cars have a Bahrain plate. From the left you have a Kuwait plate and then three Saudi plates. All of those vehicles disappear during the week. And what's worse, these fuckers will park under our building if there isn't room. I've been blocked in by these son-of-a-bitches before, and I didn't leave a very nice note under the asshole's wiper, that's for sure. To prove my point, you can see how they've blocked in someone in the photo.

Anyway, one other thing of note that was an accident when I took this photo was the delivery guy on the moped. I know I've mentioned before about how that is the modus operandi of the restaurants around here but it doesn't hurt to show one of these guys every now and then;)

That's a nice set of TaTa's you have there

2007-05-14T18:44:00.000+03:00

Apparently this is an Indian steel manufacturing company that also makes large vehicles (trucks (lorries), buses, etc.)

Go ahead Ben, say it's only mildly amusing...

New York Times Drunk In Bahrain

2007-05-14T18:09:00.000+03:00

Rachel and I went to F1 to go see our rock band that we always see the other week, and all was normal until a white guy with a huge camera and another white guy with a clipboard walked in. Now it's not uncommon to see guys with cameras at events around the country (especially around the Formula 1 weekend--which happened to be this particular weekend) but 99.9% of the time they are Indian. So I was immediately taken aback when I saw these two crackers walk in, and even more taken aback when the band announced about 20 minutes later that we had guests there from the New York Times. I put two and two together, and after I downed another beer or two I mustered the courage to go talk to these two. Turns out the guy in the photos name is Austin Considine, and he's a freelance writer for the New York Times. He's originally from Indiana, and roughly my age. The other dude (the photographer) was from Canada and not nearly as friendly. So during my bullshit session with this guy (who said he was glad to hear an American voice) I gathered he was here to cover the F1 race. He said his article would be published in the times by the end of May (ADAM, CHECK EVERYDAY FOR THIS AT SPEEDWAY IF THEY SELL THE TIMES) in the travel section. He said very little will be about Bahrain outside of the race, but he was taking notes about the band and the crowd so who knows what he will write. Badass. So anyway, I eventually went back to my table and about an hour and a half later (after I watched those two down a considerable amount of booze) he wandered over to my table and drunkenly asked me if I "was a fan of the diiirrty south" as Ludacris was being spun by the DJ in between band sets. Gotta love drunk journalists:) Anyway, I googled his ass when I got home and lo and behold he was telling the truth. I found many past articles by this guy. How cool is that to run across a New York Times writer in a bar in Bahrain? Sweet.

Postless...

2007-05-09T15:22:00.000+03:00

Sorry about the little hiatus, I'll be back to normal within a day--you should be prepared to see a shitload of new posts. I got distracted the last week or so with my new hard drive and iTunes project...

This post took me a week to do...

2007-05-07T18:10:00.000+03:00

So fucking enjoy it. The amount of time it took me to do this post is blamed solely on our slow ass internet connection, which only seems to be able to upload pictures to my blog account either late at night or early in the morning, neither of which are times that I'm usually up. Anyway, it had occurred to me that most of you (including my brothers) had missed the fact that I no longer live with Josh. I moved in with Rachel (to her place) about 3-4 months ago, and I thought I mentioned it before but apparently not. I now live in Juffair, which is the part of town that most of the white people live in (and where the U.S. Navy base is.) There are hundreds of high-rises, with more going up everyday. I happen to live in one of those high-rises now. Our building is 7 floors, and we live on the top floor. The apartment is two bedrooms (Doug lives in the other) with 2 1/2 baths. It's a fairly large place, fully furnished (right down to the pots and pans) and it's much nicer then where I used to live. The building is chock-full of amenities, including a washer and dryer, a gym, and a roof-top pool that I've been working on my wicked tan.

The first photo is our entrance--notice how all the cars park under the building. That's very common for this country, and it's for practical reasons. It keeps the cars cooler, and saves you from parking on the street.

The second photo is a close up of our building (on the left) and the sign--Dawani Apartment II.

The third is a pic of the building from down the street. Ours is the one behind the small building with the red roof (actually a Re-Max office.) Our balcony is on the top floor on the side of the building facing the street (with the shadow from the other building across the street.)

The fourth pic is of the bank of light switches, dimmers, and thermostat (notice it's in centigrade.) All of the switches here look like that.

The fifth picture is looking out of our building at night from the balcony in the living room. That's a Fuddruckers express that you can see.

The sixth is of our balcony and of some of Doug's plants.

The seventh is of me in the living room attempting to post and cursing at the internet connection.

The eighth is of our bathroom in our bedroom. Check out the bidet. I have yet to try that bad boy.

The ninth is of our wardrobe in the bedroom. They don't build closets in the buildings here, you have to buy your own (provided by the building in our case.) I don't understand that.

The tenth is of Rachel and my messy-ass king size bed.

The eleventh is of our bedroom looking in from the doorway. The wardrobe is on the left.

The twelfth is of the main hallway looking from the doorway of the kitchen, with the front door straight ahead and the living room off to the left.

The thirteenth is the kitchen. To the left of the dishwasher is the washer and dryer.

The fourteenth is looking in the apartment from the main door towards the kitchen.

The fifteenth is of the dining room, which is actually part of the living room, which is in the last photo. That's all just one large room.

Bahrain BMV

2007-04-28T17:49:00.000+03:00

Although I don't think that's the official name. This is where we went to get me a bona fide Bahrain driver's license. It was a very strange process, nothing like back home. First, (the only thing like home) they had me take an eye test, which was absolutely pointless. It was all M's, W's, and 3's. They asked me one line and that was it. Then they took copies of my passport, visa, American license, a photo that I had to provide, and 20 dinars. Poof, 20 minuets later I had a Bahrain driver license. I was a little leery about snapping photos here, so Rachel's mom took these two. The first is of the entrance, and the second of the counter and waiting area. Notice the guys in thobes behind the counter. They are like Arab Nate and Higginses...

Some buildings, some sand, some palm trees

2007-04-27T09:45:00.000+03:00

Rachel and I were casing out a park to take our kids on a field trip to when we took these photos last week. They're not all that interesting, but I'm going to note a couple things. The first is that this USED to be the coastline until they started land reclamation for a new "Bahrain Bay" project. And in all reality, this wasn't truly the natural coastline anyway, that originally sat about a quarter to half mile inland from where we are standing. All those tall buildings that are in the background, hell, any land at all you see in these pictures was at one time sea. A good portion of the northern part of the island is reclaimed, it's really an amazing feat. Anyway, back to the pictures. I included the 3rd picture because you can see a nautical navigational light that was once for boats now sitting high and dry. That amused me. The 4th picture is of the yet unfinished Word Trade Center with the newly-installed triple turbines. Those bad boys are huge, and are expected to provide the building with (ready for this number?) 11-15% of it's total power needs! WOW! That's huge! I'm sure the cost to design, manufacture, install, and maintain those is way less than the amount they'll save on their government subsidized electric bill (catch the sarcasm there?). And I also forgot to mention that this is unchartered territory, the only other large scale wind turbine project like this failed on a building in Singapore. Fucking ridiculous if you ask me. I've come to the conclusion that Arabs are for show only. As long as it looks cool, as long as they look like they are trying to be "green" in a country that thrives off of oil, then fuck it if it actually works. I'm convinced that's their mindset.

I wish I was special so I could get one of these

2007-04-27T09:37:00.000+03:00

I mean I know I'm special, don't get me wrong. Just ask Rachel or my mom. Or the "special" school I went to. You know, the one with short busses:) Anyway, what you are looking at are custom made Bahrain license plates for the Formula 1 race. That's the Bahrain International Circuit logo in the middle on the plates. And in the first pic, there is a hard-to-see placard under each plate telling what racing team had each specific plate. Bad ass. These would be worth a shit-load and a definite highlight in my plate collection. Too bad they're not for sale. Oh, for those that care, these are on display at the Motorox Cafe (which is pretty cool in itself.)

Shampoo(ing) and douche, all in one! (Grocery Store Goodness Post!)

2007-04-27T09:28:00.000+03:00

And today's FEATURE post pretty much speaks for itself.

Does your hair need more volume? Could you really go for a refreshing douche? Kill two birds with one stone with new and improved Ushara!