So as we were heading to the airport we got swamped by a Mummy like Sandstorm or what was previously referred to as a Desert Fubuki. All flight were stopped coming in and out of Kuwait, this all took place over a matter of hours. We went and checked in, had dinner at Pizza Express, the crowds were huge and there was dust inside the Airport.
We decided to head in and wait in the lounge. As soon you walk in, Pearl lounge was so packed that people were standing by the door. The only few seats left was in the smoking lounge, I really think that Pearl lounge needs to be refurbished and some new life brought into it.
Originally our flight was supposed to take off at 9:30 pm to arrive at 12:00 am for a 3:00am connection. Instead we were delayed about 4 hours and we didn’t take off until 1:30 am Kuwait time, so missing our connection and we were rescheduled for a 9:35 am flight from Dubai to Singapore. We were messed up, not the right amount of sleep, a lot of annoyed people, and its not really the airlines fault but we still went to complain. Luckily we were the first to complain at the Dubai transfer desk and so they gave us a room at the Meridian Hotel right next door and we only slept about two hours but thats something at least before heading to the airport which was a 2 minute drive. We head breakfast in the lounge, lunch on the plane, and as soon as it was off I watched 1.5 movies and passed out. All this huge adventure just to get to Singapore and all the meetings, we were supposed to land at 2:55 pm but instead we landed at 9:20 pm so we lost most of the first day, but to say that Singapore is amazing is a complete understatement.
I will be spending 72 hours in Singapore meeting two companies and going to a technology expo for my field. Its one way to meet my suppliers as well as see what else is out there. We are taking Emirates Airlines since they have the best scheduling and suprisingly the cheapest prices out of all the prices we took a look at.
I have been hearing lots of things about Singapore for years, about the rules, the beautiful city, amazing places to go, resutaurants, and people. This came up pretty quick, so I don’t have a clue where to go eat but thats what I keep wondering about.
Work has been piling up and I have been delaying a meeting in Lebanon for a few weeks but now I have to go to finsih one long meeting. I was supposed to go last week but due to unforseen circumstances I wasn’t able to. I’m going today on the Wataniya flight, which luckily for me they changed the schedule and now they have two flights a day to and from Lebanon. If I could I would go in early morning and come back at night, I have this tendency with business trips to try to keep them as short as humanely possible. A lot of people have been telling me to postpone the meeting to a later date because of the elections but I have few in the systems that nothing drastic as the airport being shutdown will happen, well at least I’m crossing my fingers, I have too much damn work to be stuck in one location. One thing is that I’m going to do is eat from Al Farouq for their amazing shawarama, I just love good shawarmas and theirs is damn good.
I don’t think I would have visited Jordan if it wasn’t for work and its one very interesting country. The airport is very small and is in need of major renovation, but they have state of the art security, I noticed all the cameras were new and the systems were relatively new. The people at the airport were nice, and I waited a little while for my luggage to come out of the belt.
The airport is about a 25 to 30 minute ride from the city, all the areas are just empty plot of lands and its a two to three lane highway to the city. As soon as you go in, its hilly just like Lebanon but a little different. I stayed at the Sheraton hotel which is decent, not the best but it did the job and they had a decent internet connection. Went to a few meetings over two days, the weather was amazing and I had my camera with me but for the first time when I’m about to snap some pictures some police men and soldiers asked me what I was doing. Basically I’m not supposed to take pictures of anything that has any security related to it.
Went to a few nice places around Amman, mostly Arab restaurants with good food. The service is decent but not the same as Lebanon sometimes you feel like the waiter doesn’t feel like working today or you caught him on a bad day. I also had dinner at a colleagues place and I have to say that people are very hospitable. Its seems that the people from the Gulf seem to have a bad reputation in Jordan, I got that feeling and when I asked they mentioned what happens in some places in Amman. Abdoon is one of the nicer areas in Amman, and there are a lot of round abouts which people just drive right through. I passed by this area which looked like a fortress and turned out to be the American Embassy, its practically huge, I didn’t think it would be that big, there must be at least 10 buildings in that compound and thats all I can see from one side.
Third morning was my flight back to Kuwait on Royal Jordanian, easy check and the staff is friendly. I have to say I was impressed by their lounge. It was very spacious and comfortable with food availabe, lots of comfortable seating, also movie chairs for people to watch what they want. It was an interesting trip, next time around I want to go to Aqabah and plan for it, its about four hours away by car so I didn’t have a chance to go this time around.
It was just one of those days, got to work around 8 am and didn’t get home until 10:30 pm. Was at work for about 12 hours then headed to one of parliamentary candidate talks later in the evening with a few members of the family. Sometimes you don’t have enough time to finish the work at hand, and the most annoying thing is when you email somebody and they say they didn’t receive it or just ignore when you have work to do or you need some details from them.
After work took off to the nadwah didn’t have enough time to change, didn’t think it was going to be too long but I was exhausted and I knew there was going to be a grid lock. I parked my car far enough away to enjoy the walk to the school auditorium, lots of people were out tonight and the place was packed. Nice to see a very large female turn out and they had half the hall. After a very interesting speech, everyone was saying good bye, all I could think of at that point was food. Not eating all day makes my brain non-functional.
Got up in the morning headed to work, weather was deecent on Thursday morning. All was well, plugged in my laptop, checked my emails and a few people. About an hour later I strange buzzing sound and a sudden smell, turns out the smell was of a burnt out fuse. With that the power sockets and A/C went out in my side of the building, luckily other side had more employees they still had power and A/C but no lights, so they could still work. After about a few hours my laptop ran out of power and I was going back and forth talking to people and writing things down. By 3 pm the room was really warm, it got a bit muggy, and I had a ton of paper notes on my table with spread sheets, quotes and proposals. It wasn’t fixed for a while since the electrician wasn’t available, lets just say its not nice to work in a hot office.
Got up around 6:30 am, got to work around 7:30 am. I had a few reports and emails to finish up before taking off to the airport. I had the 10:45 am Kuwait Airways flight to Dubai, I didn’t have any luggage to check in, I just had my brief case with me. Left work around 9:50 am, got to the airport by 10:15 am to find the flight had been delayed to 11:15 am which worked fine for me. As for the flight details I will be discussing that in another point.
The meeting was starting around 3:00 pm and I finished around 7:00 pm Dubai time. My flight was at 8:35 pm on Emirates, so I was flying to the airport. I had no choice in the matter, the next flight to Kuwait was around 1:35 am which is nuts. Luckily for me the driver took a back way to the airport which was a first time for me, we pass three or four very large round abouts and I got to the airport by 7:40 pm. If I took Sheikh Zayed road as the usual route then I wouldn’t have made the plane due to the rush hour traffic. Got home around 9:40 pm, and hungry as hell didn’t have a chance to eat anything all day and the airplane food wasn’t that appetizing.
I really do hate these one day flights, got a lot of work done but still really tiring.
Valleywag has been scooping up dirt on the Silicon Valley for a little while now, and they seem to have a very good idea of the worst IT jobs in that area. They can be monotonous jobs with low paying wages, no where to go, and each person would be burnt out mentally before completing one year at the job, not including the bad working environments which resemble caves in the basements.
These dusty days have been slowing things down a bit, and it isn’t the best days to be out. I’m a bit annoyed at the weather but there wasn’t much to do about it. I wanted to just stay home, do nothing, watch a lot of anime and relax. That is how the pace was going but I had an 8:00 pm meeting for work and hopeful that it wouldn’t take more then 1.5 hours.
At around 7:55 pm I got a call telling me there is a huge problem at a certain site and it needs to be solved post haste. That pretty much ruined my night, I was working for a couple of hours, and I was on the phone shouting my head off trying to get all the facts straight so I know what steps to take next. Its the worst thing possible when that sucker punch comes out of no where, and these days there have been a lot of sucker punches at work, I have managed to bring those numbers down just so we can organize all that is going on but it is annoying trying to diffuse every situation and make sure things go smoothly from that point forward. This is going to be a long couple of weeks.
The most entertaining and satisfying object there is in an office is the shredder. I feel very satisfied when I am done with some work and I take all the papers I have straight to the shredder. Then I stand there for some time watching it shred all the papers, there is that thought that something might get caught in it but we can avoid that. I remember all the desks got messier the first time the shredder broke, but now that we have a new one hopefully it will last a lot.
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