Social Butterfly

It has been awhile since I last added a new chapter to my blog. I have been quite the social butterfly this week. I got to meet two of the Intercontinental upper management guys that will be working on our project. One was from the Intercontinental in Tripoli and the other was a regional director from Dubai. They both had some interesting ideas on how to make our Benghazi hotel a deluxe hotel.

Then on Friday I had dinner with one of the fellow ex-pat bloggers that I have been chatting with for the past couple of weeks. Turns out he is an American that is going to medical school in Libya. His father is Libyan and so his medical school tuition is free for children of Libyans. He plans to finish up school here and then go back to the USA to take his medical exams and be a surgeon in the US.

I mentioned that my apartment is so large that I will probably need a maid. Well I hired one on Saturday. She is going to come in once a week and take care of the place.

Turns out she is the maid for my American neighbors across the street. One of the first things she asked me during my interview with her was “Are you a Christian....”. I said YES and she informed me that my American neighbors are also and that they have a Bible study on Sunday evenings.

After she left I got a phone call from Alex my American neighbor inviting me to Bible study on Sunday night. So I just got back from the Bible study and decided to send out this blog to let you know how things went. Had a great time....met some more Americans and my new neighbors are very nice. They have lived in Benghazi for about two years. It will be nice to have some new folks to possibly hang out with. We are scheduled to have another Bible study next Sunday night.

Who would have thought that God would find a Christian maid for me and new Christian neighbor right across the street. HE is an Awesome God.

I will let you know what HE does for me this week..........talk to you soon.

English Tutor

Just to let everyone know.....the sand storm only lasted the one day. There was a fine reddish dust over everything the next day. God cleaned up the mess the best way He knows how....we had a good rain storm today to wash everything off.
I think another reason that I was given this job as assistant project manager for the Benghazi five star hotel was my mastery of the English language....yeah right. All of the documentation for the hotel project is to be in English. So another task that I have to do each day is review all of the daily, weekly and monthly reports, check all of the meeting minutes for our vast array of meetings that we have and review memos that go to the client and the general contractor.
Sometimes the phonetic spelling of my co-workers as they put together their draft copy for my review is quite amusing. For example we wanted to talk about the new concrete curb. They put "kerb". Technically they are right, since that is the British English spelling. They have a little trouble when to use "is" and "was". I noticed today that the taxi cabs have a sign on the top of their car "TAKSI". Today on the menu it had "milk sheik"....
So I guess I should have paid more attention in English class. You never know when other subjects from high school and college will pop up and be necessary (did I spell that right?? N.E.C.E.S.S.A.R.Y)

Oh, Mr. Sandman

Well we had a first for me at the job site today. We had a snow day at the job site.

Not really a snow day, more like a sandstorm day. The wind really started picking up today about 9 or 9:30.....pieces of sheet metal were flying around here and there and the metal fence near the job trailer was banging and clanging. The general contractor told all of the stone masons to stay off of the scaffolding so there would not be any accidents. By 12:30 the very fine sand was still blowing harder and thicker.

We shut the job site down about 1:00. On the drive home you could not see the Mediterranean Sea from the hotel it was that foggy/sandy. It was sort of like the movie, “The Fog” as we were driving past the harbor.

Good thing I had gone to the grocery store yesterday to pick up some butter and bread and some more canned drinks. One of the guys at the office said that October is known for sandstorms and sometimes they can last two or three days. Glad my internet and satellite dish are working in case I get sanded in.

I will let you know how long I am stuck in the apartment.

First Friday

Well today was my first Friday (my only day off) at the new apartment. Got to sleep in until 10 a.m. None of the businesses are open until around 4:00 p.m. because of the Holy Day. So it was a relaxing day until I started hearing the chant of the local mosque. I probably should have checked that out before I rented the apartment. You need to know where the local mosque is in case you are in direct line with the mosque speaker system.

I had a late breakfast and I will inform you that boxed milk is not too bad. One cannot compare it to good old fashioned, ice cold, Marsh 2% the kind you have with a slice of French Silk pie from Perkins......yummmmmm.....but it made my sugar Smacks taste pretty good.

I spent the morning putting a little sketch together of my apartment. I do not have Autocad on my Mac, but my Sketchup software did OK in a pinch. I knew my apartment is large, but when I did a quick calculation of the rough dimensions, we are talking a little over 1600 square feet for one person. I need a maid.......

Speaking of maids, my landlord’s wife is going to look into having someone take care of the place once a week. I think the going rate is about $35 a day for maid service.

Now I just need to find a laundry service close by and I will be all set.

The satellite TV is my next project. I currently get 705 channels. 28 of those are in English, of those 28 we have 10 news channels, 6 Christian channels like 700 Club, one old US movie channels, and 10 QVC channels, one tennis station. Glad I brought some DVDs from home. I am looking into another satellite system for the roof. If I buy Showtime, it is $50 a month, if I get a different satellite dish, it is $150 total cost. I will do some more research on this other satellite deal.

Thanks for checking out my blog and sending comments......enjoy your two day weekend.

The Cable Guy

It is good to have a landlord right downstairs. I got a call around 9:00 p.m. and my landlord wanted to know if it was OK to bring the satellite dish guy to the apartment.

I said “sure, what day would he like to come,” he said “no, he is with me now”. So sure enough my landlord and the cable guy popped in and within about a half hour had me up and running. About 500 channels and about 12 of them are in English. No ESPN or movie channels, I am looking into that this week. While the cable guy was fixing stuff, I asked my landlord where I could get a microwave. “Don’t buy one” he said, “I will give you mine...we never use it”. So sure enough he calls me and tells me to come and get it from his apartment.

So I am all set. TV is almost ready and now I can microwave popcorn when I find some movie channels in English. I watched the Wild Wild West with Will Smith in French. It did not have the same rough tough cowboy feel in French.

I noticed today that having worked a six day work week and only getting Fridays off for the past month, my mind is playing tricks on me. We have meetings every other day with the owner and contractor, and today it felt like I was in the movie “Groundhog Day.” We have the same meetings and the same people at the meetings, it is like I just did this yesterday. Let me know if my blogs are the same as the previous posting. I will try not to do that.

Marsh and Kroger take a lesson

Today I thought I would take a little tour of the neighborhood, it was about 5:30 p.m.. Maybe walk over to one of the local restaurants and get a bite to eat then go by the grocery on the way home. Found out that Libyan folks like to eat late. So the menu at the restaurant was somewhat limited at this time of day. Anything grilled or BBQ was all that was available. The full menu is not available until 7 p.m. So I went with a grilled steak.....they do not ask you how you want it done, it will be well done let me tell you.... They have great lentil soup at this place. I will take you there when you come visit.

After dinner the local grocery is across the street. You have to be careful crossing the street, cars are coming at you every which way.

Got to the grocery, the push carts are pretty small.....I kept looking for a larger one. I figured out why the carts are so small. The aisles in the store are so narrow, a regular sized cart would not fit. It is like the hardware store at 62nd and Keystone, jammed packed full of stuff.

I got some canned fruit (thank you Del Monte), the milk is in a box and not refrigerated. I will let you know how that all works and tastes later in the week. Did you know that you can find toilet paper and paper towels in the same aisle as canned fruit? Maybe it is some sort of Libyan Dewey Decimal system. I had to just get a few things, because I did

not want to have to carry too much stuff back to the apartment and besides it starts to get dark around 6:30. One thing that Libyan sack boys do for you....they unload your cart for you at the check out stand. Kind of a nice service.....listen up Kroger and Marsh.

I never really looked at it this way, but many essential items start with the letter T.

Toilet paper and Towels (I got a couple of sets of towels today also) it is tough to take a shower and try to air dry.....trust me it does not work.

So my new routine is to get a little exercise by walking a few blocks, check out some more local restaurants and get groceries on the way home.

I found a barber shop tonight too.....might have to get a haircut soon.

I will let you know how boxed milk tastes in the next installment.

Good-bye City Life

As they said on “Green Acres”, “good-bye city life”, “give me some of that country air”.

I will be moving out to the suburbs on Friday afternoon. It is my day off, so it is a good time to get settled into my new crib. I have added some new photos of the new place.

The hotel was clean and comfortable and I was just getting the restaurant staff broken in to know what I wanted to order as soon as I walked into the cafe. I have been spoiled. Now I will have to start cooking for myself. Either that or I need to find some good restaurants close to the apartment and start breaking them in.

I was leery about going to an apartment. I heard they were all expensive and I did not know what they would be like inside. After seeing the buildings around the hotel project, they are not in very good shape. Rumor has it that shortly after the hotel is completed, the entire surrounding area of the hotel is going to be redeveloped. There is even talk of shutting down two lanes of the street in front of the hotel, in order to make a new beach boardwalk. We will have to wait and see about all of that.

Benghazi is not a very large city in land area. Maybe close to one million people, but you can get to the far reaches of the city by car within 15 to 20 minutes. From the new map that I downloaded you will see that the city has a number of highway loops to help get traffic into the downtown area. 

My new apartment is not quite at the outer most edge. The buildings are newer and kept up nicer. I was very lucky to find such a great place. It is a two bedroom unit on the second floor of one large villa. The landlord lives downstairs and another family lives in the other second floor apartment. With two bedrooms I will have room for any of my followers that are planning to visit Libya for their vacations. I have a living room, dining room, family room and huge bathroom. The kitchen is large enough to have a small dinette table. The TV has a satellite dish, so maybe I will be able to get ESPN....and see the Colts. I have to carry three keys around to get into the apartment. One for the main gate that opens to a marble courtyard, then another for the main door to the building and then the last key for my own apartment. I think the new place will get the Carol (Seal of Approval) when she comes to visit later in the school year.

My landlord and his wife both speak English. They lived in Florida for about five years.

They said that another American couple live across the street, so I after I get settled in, I will have to bake some cookies (yeah, right) and take them over to introduce myself.

I will try to do a better job at updating my blog. Some of my followers recently commented on my lack of updated material. Thanks for your support and I will keep you as current as I can. BTW....I have my own wifi system. It seems to work great so I should be able to MagicJack or Skype anytime I want.

Talk to you soon...........

Chinese Water Torture

So how many people remember the song “Killing Me Softly with his Song”???.........How many people have heard pan flute music??? Well can you imagine every morning while you are eating breakfast at the hotel, you hear all of the old songs done with a pan flute. The songs are, “Killing me softly”, “Godfather Theme Song”, “Love Story”, etc. They go on and on, over and over. The tape system or whatever they use in the hotel restaurant must be a continuous tape. I can tell when I need to be finishing up my breakfast so that I do not miss my driver, because the “Godfather Theme” is playing.

I thought this morning the machine was broken and the restaurant was quiet, so I started playing my music on my iPhone to break up the monotony. Then someone in the back room realized that the tape was not playing so the theme song of “Titanic” started up. One can only take so much pan flute music. It is an acquired taste and I do not think I have it yet and I do not plan to appreciate it in the very near future.

Just had to get that off my chest. It reminded me of when I was in college and my roommate played the theme song of “Shaft” over and over again. I exploded one day and it was not a pretty sight.

So I guess I had better start looking for my apartment soon, or heads will roll at the hotel and I do not want to start an incident. The music truly is “Killing Me Softly”.

Keeping Busy

Sorry that I have not been keeping my blog up to date. My boss was in meetings all of this week in Dubai. We now have an official operator of the Benghazi Hotel. It will be the newest InterContinental Hotel (IHG) in Libya. From what I understand we might have to change a number of things in our current construction in order to meet the IHG standards. The folks at IHG also want the deadline for the hotel to be the end of April 2011. So the pressure is on to get it done on time.

Since my boss was out of town, I had to run the weekly design and progress meetings. So in preparation for these meetings, I did not have time to blog. I hate it when work gets in the way of play.......

I think I will share with you some thoughts on daily creature comforts that we have in Libya. Or maybe I should say some of the food and drink issues. 

Coffee:  I have mentioned before that Nescafe is the standard coffee of choice. I am starting to adjust to it, although I did have to tell our job site coffee person that I like mine black. Before he was loading it up with sugar and cream.

Tea:  This beverage is very popular. You can either order it as green tea or red tea. The green tea is your normal very light tea. The red tea is actually Lipton tea with a red label. It is a little darker and stronger.....that is my preference.

Coke:  Thank goodness for the people in Atlanta. They got the word out to Libya and you can get a regular can of Coca Cola just about any place. I must be ordering a Coke at each meal because now the waiters at the hotel restaurant automatically bring me a Coke and pour it before I even finish the rest of my order.

Hamburgers:  The cheese burgers here are pretty good. Not too thick so you don’t have to worry about being done or not, but the amazing part of their burgers are the buns. The bread in Libya is great and they use large buns for their burgers.

French fries:  So far every french fry seems to be coming from the same fryer. They are not soggy and wimpy, perfectly golden brown. They do not have very long fries, but that is fine with me, so long as they are golden brown.

Well I had better end this blog.....I am getting hungry.  

WiThis WiThat WiMAX

Technology is still an issue for me this week. I tried to call Carol and the wifi at the hotel was so bad, that I only got every other word. I have been doing some investigating into the situation and have discovered that a device called WiMAX is the solution. Well sort of. The government controls the internet access so you have to buy a WiMax unit from the government run company. Sort of like having Comcast as the only provider. There are two flavors of WiMax units, one is a USB device ($120) that plugs into your computer, the other is a larger unit ($260) like a router. It plugs into the wall and then the whole apartment can have wifi. We have one of the routers at our job trailer and 20 people use that one unit. The speed is OK, but you are sharing the bandwidth with the rest of the office.

So the IT guy from our office took me in to town to get the USB version. Well the price is right, but it does not work on a Mac. Evidently they have software built into the unit that only works with PC’s. So I was able to convince the RWA office in Tripoli that since I will be getting my own apartment by the end of the month, that it would be great if I could get a router. I know it works with the Mac, since that is how I am getting access to the internet at the job trailer. I got an email from our IT guy in Tripoli and he said that all I have to do is fill out some forms with RWA and they will get one setup for me. So maybe in a week or so, I will be up and running with my own wifi system.

The way people pay for their internet access is you buy credit cards. You rub off the back of the card and type in the code number at the website and then it add more time on to your wifi. They use a similar system to add time on your cellphone. The credit cards are $30 a month for 15Gb of download material. I have been told by the IT at our job site that 15Gb is plenty per month. They don’t know Carol and I.....we like to Skype a long time.....we will see how it goes and I will update you on this effort.

Creature comforts

Technology has its ups and downs. It appears that the internet can only go where the money is......again, I have been spoiled by my instant internet connection in Indy. I put my notebook computer on my lap and it finds my home wi-fi and I can communicate with the rest of the World. The World Wide Web is not so WIDE. Today I was so frustrated trying to call my wife using my MagicJack. I was ready to pull my hair out and I do not have that much left. Our conversations were broken up and we would get every third word or no complete words at all. I thought it was the wi-fi at the hotel, but today, I called her from the job trailer and it was not much better.

I might have to resort to email for future conversations, but that is NOT my first choice.

We had some banking issues to resolve today and I could tell that Carol was getting frustrated on the phone too.........

On a less serious note.......I have been doing better getting my stomach adjusted to the food around here. Finally got my eggs this morning , just like I like them and this evening I tried a Benghazi burger. It was not too bad, maybe a quarter pounder on a huge sesame seed bun. The french fries around here are not too bad either. There are no USA food chain restaurants around here. When one of the guys at the job trailer said he was going to get some sandwiches, I asked if he could bring back a Whopper......he speaks English and has lived in the USA for awhile.....he started laughing and said, “I don’t think so, not around here.” The carbonated drinks around here are: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and Pepsi. So some of the comforts of home are available. Coffee in most places is Nescafe, an instant coffee. They seem to have a lock on all the coffee in most restaurants. We have a coffee person that has my Nescafe ready for me each morning by the time I get my computer logged in.

When it comes to TV shows, we have four soccer matches a day. Today was a cricket match for a change of pace. Two Arabic soap operas, a german news channel, a French movie station with American movies. It is strange to watch Sylvester Stallone yelling at someone with Arabic sub-titles and a French voice being dubbed in. Sort of makes the tough Rambo a sissy........if I do say so myself.

No meetings scheduled at the job trailer tomorrow, but I need to prepare for my first design coordination meeting on Monday morning. A number of things need to be worked out before we get too far along on the project.

I have been trying to follow up on comments that are being posted. If I have not responded, just send me a short email and I will get back with you.

Talk to you soon..........

Friday - feeling better

Friday already?? Hard to believe that six work days have passed already. Last Friday I was sick and it took nearly three days to get recovered from that. Now I get my first Friday off and all I can think about is getting some good quality naps in before we start having meetings again on Saturday.

The wifi at the hotel is having issues and I think I did discover that when I use the wifi at night, there is a lot of traffic. Had a great chat with Carol this morning before the wifi chatter started. Again, the six hour difference in time does not lend itself very well to having long quality Magic Jack chats with Indy.

I posted a new photo from my balcony today......I did not realize that the way my hotel is oriented that I could see the back side of the hotel project from my balcony. Technically my balcony has a sea view......I won’t let management know.....they might want to raise my room rate.

With each blog posting, I will try to share a little something interesting or quirky about my experience in Libya. Today I discovered some breakfast issues. My room rate includes a breakfast buffet, juice, coffee, toast, rolls, cereal and etc. I asked the restaurant manager last night, “what are the breakfast hours??”. He said “they open from 5 to 11”. I also asked him about if one can get eggs for breakfast. “No problem” they are custom order, so “sure” get eggs. Ok, I slept in on my day off. I got up at 10:30 went down for breakfast, the sign on the door said, “Open”. The waiter says, “Mister, we are closed.....” I said “I thought you were open until 11”.... “We close at 10 on Fridays”. He says, “go ahead and get something if you still want it”.....everything was still laid out like any other day. I said fine......”Oh by the way, can I get some eggs”......”No eggs on Friday.”  So I guess I will have to watch what day it is and what time it is a little better in the future. 

Thanks for following my blog......let me know if you have any questions and I will try to fill in some grey areas.