Video Calling - $1 per hour!!

Great news! I finally have internet in my room and can use skype outside of work. I purchased a USB aircard that is really fast (5mB down – 3mB up) for only $30usd. Once all the calculations are done, it costs about $1 per hour of video calls, which is incredible so I can talk to Chelsea from my room. I can also use the internet without going through the companies firewalls, so that means I can watch YouTube, download songs from iTunes, and get on Facebook. Awesomeness!

My roommate, Nour and Salim are really nice, fun people, from Egypt and Algeria respectively. They think that I am crazy (literally) and frequently ask why I don’t ask to stay in Saudi. We have already started to become good friends and I feel like I can talk to them about “sensitive” issues. I have already had good talks with them about the culture, the religion, and the politics in the Middle East. I do not side with them on many issues, but the issue of the US/UK continuing to fight wars that do not “belong to them” is hard to argue, especially when the US/UK do not worry about disputes in non-oil rich countries…

The food continues to be good here, and I have played basketball with the Chinese guys 3 more times. They all work for the same company, Sinopec that does contract management and construction, organizing all the services companies for Saudi Aramco and constructing anything ranging from pipe-lines to advanced office buildings. Their schedules are not very good, living here for six months and then days off for one mopnth!!! One interesting fact I discovered is the biggest construction company in Saudi, who is closely related to the royal family, is “Bin Laden Co.,” the family company that allowed Osama Bin Laden to have millions of dollars.

Since my last job things have settled down here a lot. Most everyone has checked out their tools, trucks, and personnel. Now we are waiting for the next wave of jobs, which seems to be in 2-3 days. It looks like we will have 4 jobs all at once!! Until they start we are slow and I fill my time on travel sites, finance, Wikipedia, and eBay. I need to get a hobby.

With the position in Angola and the visa process being complicated, many times your scheduled days off don’t come through on time. This makes it hard to plan vacations since many times and reservations must be made months in advance. So instead of having Chelsea or I decide we are going to (blank) and planning the vacation for (blank), I have started working on a planner that allows us to choose by activity, month, or location for all of the places that we want to visit, highlighting food, activities, and sites for each. Ideally, we will be able to go many of the places just at the end of their peak seasons when availabilities are high and costs are low. With that said, today I focused on ski trips. It seems like there is always snow somewhere and the logical destinations are Chile and New Zealand in our summer/fall, Wyoming, Colorado, and Canada in our winter, and Switzerland, France, and Italy in our spring.

That’s enough rambling for now.