The First Week, or was it one long day?

I have been in Pakistan for a little over a week, it feels like several months. Islamabad is an interesting city. I don’t know what I expected, but it has certainly exceeded all expectations that I had. My office is like a beehive, a classified, chaotic, crazy beehive. Only instead of producing honey we produce……not honey. I have adjusted well, while many of the people that arrived around the same time as I, have gotten the Pakistan poops. I continue to order out regularly and try new things and have had no issues. Additionally, I got the two hour crash course of driving on the right side car on the left side of the road in a city where traffic laws are more of a suggestion then a rule.

Take the traffic circle for example. You go around in a clockwise fashion and you turn when you get to your street. Take a traffic circle with three lanes; you would think that it would be intuitive to use the outside lane to turn out of, not in Pakistan. Below is an illustration. I am the red line, trying to stay in my lane. The black lines are everyone else. Remember, we are going in a clockwise motion to get to our turns. Notice how the arrows go in every direction at once and nobody is driving in the 12-3 o'clock area. They take the most direct route which includes the inside lane directly out.

This particular traffic circle requires a special driving style. Close your eyes and punch the gas, hoping that you don’t get t-boned. Seriously, I left my eyes opened and I screamed. I had to recreate the "down with USA" Jersey Barrier because it is hard to drive and take pictures with my eyes closed. Of course the Simon-David is not the center of the circle, but I think it should be.

In addition crazy circles, there a ton of check points in the city which cause major jams, nothing like 5 lanes turning into one. Once again, common courtesy and traffic laws are optional at this point. Additionally, I find if particularly fun to have machine guns pointed at me while they search my trunk. Once the trunk is close it is time to go, but wait, you must look to the left and right because the motorcycles whip around. Take the following picture, when I scanned it and sent it to e-mail it sent black and white, but I think you get the point.

Nothing Like a family outing to the Dairy Queen.

They tell us to take a different route to and from work each day, varrying the times of arrival. This helps prevent setting patterns which make us easy to kill. While I think it is a great theory, I don't think it goes beyond that. Unfortunately I do not have my ODHSGPS because it is only compatible with left hand drive. Besides, I get lost so much no one could ever establish a pattern.

The nice thing about my job and the city is that you must keep moving, much like the lizard that lives inside my house. We made eye contact and then he ran up the wall and behind the curtain. I hope he eats some of the bugs that will potentially give me malaria. Not that I am concerned about malaria. No I am concerned about skin cancer since the medication I am to prevent malaria causes easy burning.

My next post will focus on my house and living conditions. Stay tuned.

Tough and Unforgiving

My wife is a wonderful woman. She has been referred to as tough and unforgiving (you probably thought I was talking about Islamabad). She actually liked that designation. Within 24 hours of giving birth to a 9lb 8oz baby she drove herself home from the hospital. Someone from church actually said that if we ever had to cross the plains with handcarts he would want her in his group.

I simply describe her as stubborn. It is possible that she is the most stubborn person in the world. I run a close second, only because I ultimately succumb to her stubbornness. My current dilemma is that I am a long ways away and I noticed that I have very few pictures of her. I have thousands of the kids and dog. The source of the problem is that she never stops moving. Seriously, perpetual motion, if I could find a way to tap that energy I could solve the world’s energy crisis and be a millionaire.

That would be cool. But it still does not solve my picture problems. Since I can’t afford those high speed cameras that allow people to photograph a frogs tongue grabbing an insect or a bullet flying through the air I will continue to be picture deficient. Vance loves to take pictures so I told Emily that she could occupy him with picture duty and she could sit still while he snapped photos. I thought it sounded great, but she is stubborn, so all I get are the memories in my mind. These are fading fast due to my current work environment.

I love you Emily and I miss you dearly. Unlike many men, I actually enjoy monogamy and family life. So this song is dedicated to you. Maybe it will inspire you to introduce beauty into my not so beautiful existence here in Islamabad.

Welcome to Islamabad?!?!?!?!?

I don't even know where to start. This will be a relatively short post, not because of a lack of excitement, but rather way to much. All I can say is welcome to Islamabad, Pakistan. Between the 9 hour time change and the 12-15 hour work days I am going to limit posts to once or twice a week. I also plan on maintaining a bike theme by living vicariously through others. You will see what I mean. I also plan on showing a crazy picture each time. Trust me, there will be more than enough. I am going to bed.

I Am the Butterfly

I apologize for the animosity towards butterflies. I was suffering from sleep deprivation and that sort of anger directed at any of God's creatures is truly unwarranted under any circumstance. That being said the butterfly is an essential piece to the chaos theory and as it turns out, so am I. Could it be that I am a butterfly? Not one of those fru fru ones, but one with a menacing pattern that looks like a face or skull or something….menacing.

Yesterday I boarded a flight to Dubai and experienced something that I have never experienced before. The flight had about 250 people on it; the majority looked like they were from India based on their attire. But since I am not an expert I will base my assumption on that. The bottom line is that they clearly do not abide by the rules that the majority of Americans hold to be both true and sacred. Boarding the plane was a nightmare based on the fact that most could not reach the over head bin and had to step on the seats to put their stuff away (multiplied times a couple of hundred). Of course the standard government fare put in the very back of the plane and when I got to my seat someone was sitting in it. I am a nice guy, well I did a nice thing one time, but considering I was about to embark on a 13 hour nonstop flight, I was pretty serious about having my aisle seat so I could stand and stretch from time to time.

The man stood up, to about my waist, and said in broken English "we trade you sit there." He then pointed to the middle section where there was an empty seat with 2 or so people to either side. I said "You short, I tall, get out of my seat." He didn't take me seriously so I took my hat of displaying my cleanly shorn scalp and I said "I want my seat." This time I remembered the key to international communication, speak really slowly and loud. The problem was that the men on the flight insisted on sitting with their women, but like all airlines, they are not necessarily booked that way. So he moved and began bargaining. At some point some guy moved so they could sit together and it was at that point that I noticed the majority of the people were trying to do the same. It was nuts.

The flight attendants were working hard to get people to sit, as they would get one, two more would get up and move around. It came to one man who refused to sit unless his wife was next to him. The flight attendants politely asked the man to sit and stated that they would sort it out once we go into the air and that it was necessary for the flight to take off. The man refused.

I became the butterfly (menaced of course) and flapped my mighty wings. I wish it had looked that cool, however, I don't know how to describe what happened, or exactly what I said. Imagine if you will, a 6'3" man weighing in at 225 pounds with a freshly shaved head standing up in an airplane and going berserk. Well, that was me I got up and yelled "for the love of everything holy, everybody sits down. I will give you my seat if you will just sit down." A hush came across the plane, everyone sat….and stared. It was silent; I grabbed my stuff and crawled across two people to my new seat.

What happened next is almost unbelievable; a flight attendant approached me and said she owed me a drink. While I don't drink I was just glad they didn't kick me off. Then another attendant approached and said that after the seatbelt sign went off that I could move to an empty aisle seat a couple of rows forward. As the plane began to taxi on the runway and take off people got up and started moving around again and someone moved to my soon to be seat. This was insanity and I would have 13 hours in my sub-compact seat.

Once we were in the air a woman approached me and said "I need to speak with you privately in the back." So I crawled to the aisle and went to the back where I figured an air marshal was waiting for me. When I got there, the flight attendant said "We appreciate what you did for us, my girlfriend spoke to the boss and we scored you a seat in 1^st class." That was the last thing I expected from freaking out on an airplane.

I was a hero, when I got to my new super huge seat that reclined and had massive amounts of room I nearly cried. An older flight attendant who I assume was the head person said "we appreciate what you did, what can I get you to drink." She even gave me the whole can of tonic water. The ladies from the back periodically checked up on me.

Much like the butterfly, I have the ability to set things in motion and while my outbursts usually end in chaos, this ended up in a nice chair with free comfort socks and a delicious meal. They even had all you could eat Walker's Shortbread in the hard to find variety with chocolate chips.

I am the butterfly! (Queue menacing tune).

The Butterfly Effect

Ok, so I didn't make it very far today. Appearently a butterfly flapped its wings at a small island in the South Atlantic and it caused a major storm in Chicago. That in turn caused a delay in flights to Atlanta, which in turn caused a delay to everywhere in the world. I hate butterflies. The result for me was that I missed my flight by 20 minutes which cost me a day of travel and instead of wearing the same underwear for two days it will now be three plus. Freaking butterflies. I got off my plane at 10:30 p.m. and stood in a "customer service" line for two hours. I said I was going to Islamabad and the woman did one of those "yeahhhhhh" things which are never good. We sat for the next hour and when I say sat I mean that she sat and I stood, trying to figure it out. Then she would say things like "well if we do this, it would put in Istanbul at….." To which I would reply "I am not going to Istanbul." She would then let out one of those long ominous "hhhhhhmmmmm" sounds. At that point I just said put me on the day after flight and I will be fine, then all of a sudden it worked, sort of. It appears that my long held suspicions are true, that the airlines are like insurance companies and are full of ways to make your life miserable and that they also have loopholes. They are also affected by butterflies, flipping butterflies…I hate them.

Turns out that even though the flight I was trying to get was overbooked and adding me overbooked it by one more there is a secret loophole. I am proudly releasing a secret industry secret. If you are booked for a seat that is booked already and you are the first to check in you get the seat. While this is clearly not as good as making the original flight, at least I am not some loser that may have to give up a seat on an overbooked flight.

I was however the loser that was standing (still) in the Dulles airport at 1:30 in the morning with a minor problem, because one of the connecting flights had to be released there was a mysterious problem with ticket issuance and I was told to see an "expert in the morning." I makes you wonder who I was talking to at 1:30 a.m. in the Dulles airport "customer service." I was hoping that by expert she meant that the person knew the difference between Istanbul and Islamabad. Because the delay was butterfly induced they would not spring for a room, besides, at 2 a.m. by the time I get to the room and get up at 4 a.m. to see the "expert" at 6:00 it would be more painful. I crashed in the D1 Gate waiting area and woke up several hours later to people staring at me. As I wiped the drool from my face, the airport person was announcing the boarding call for the flight to Chicago…… butterflies suck.

It begins!!!!

I was sitting in the Columbus, Georgia airport trying to figure out how I could spice up my blog. Then it occurred to me that if I added a post that might actually help. I will have plenty of opportunities to do this as I spend the next two days traveling from one hot place to another. The amazing thing is that I will be leaving one hot place where I cannot understand what anyone is saying (Columbus) to go to another hot place where I cannot understand anyone (Pakistan). Even more amazing is that being a former British colony (both of them by the way) I expect the English spoken in Pakistan to be much more understandable than that of Columbus, Georgia. In addition I have started my malaria medication which states on the bottle that I should avoid direct sunlight.

Another bonus to easier communication is that I get to wear the same clothes for two days. Who doesn’t love that? I also got an e-mail from the person picking me up once I am half way around the world. He stated that I would get an opportunity to get cleaned up and change before we go to work. Wow, imagine 38 hours of travel, 9 hours time difference and I get to go to work as soon as I change my two day old underwear! I am trying to come up with a catch phrase that I can apply to situations like this. Super, oh joy, why not? If you can come up with something let me know I have a feeling I will be using that phrase a lot this year.

The next task will be to work out the bicycle situation. I will report back once I get my life in order.