10 Years and Running

University Registration

2009-09-23T16:37:00.003+01:00

I had my first introductory class this morning at Birmingham University and everything seemingly went well.

I sat for about 2 hours listening to about 10 people talk to us about a various range of things to do with university life and I would say that 8 of the 10 people talked to us at one point or another about the many different avenues that exist for helping students having problems or in crisis.

It really makes me wonder how hard this is going to be. I mean, they were pushing it THAT hard.

After all that I went and had my picture taken for my student ID card aka my discount card and signed some paperwork so I can have the privilege to park in a pay as u stay parking lot about a 5 minute walk from my building.

Although, I noticed a nice huge house on the corner-- right across from my building. I am contemplating going and knocking on their door to see if I can pay them to utilize their drive way for 3 days a week or so.

I mean, the pay as you park parking lot is only a £1 for the entire day but I never have coins on me and parking is semi-scarce. If the home-owners agree then I will pay them a fee up front per term and that way I can keep my policy of avoiding coins.

Oh and I think I am going to play American football for the university... If they take me that is.

Important Mail

2009-09-13T00:15:00.003+01:00

Today I received an important letter that I have been awaiting for a few weeks now through my door. It was my intro pack from the University of Birmingham with my online login and password so that I can officially register online to begin classes on Monday the 28th of this month.

I was awaiting this packet because one must register online prior to the zero week for freshman that starts the week before class so that you can receive your student ID and all the other stuff.

Now if I can just get the VA to get on the ball with funding my program. I was recently told by a VA rep on the phone that it could take up to 6 months before a decision is made. I will be close to half-way done with the first year by then.

Maybe I can get some UK funding in the mean-time.

A Life Changing Deployment

2009-08-26T13:07:00.009+01:00

Ten years ago today I was sent with my Air Force squadron to a super secret squirrel base in the middle of the Israeli desert for the majority of the month of August and it was the single most life changing trip of my life. I saw and heard a lot of things that reminded me of very unsavory parts of my life prior to that while also seeing and hearing things that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Before leaving Germany we had to attend a mandatory briefing in which the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations ( OSI ) told us to take the batteries out of our cell phones and place them on the desk in front of us. The briefer then went on to talk to give us a briefing telling us of the hazards in the area. The strangest part of what he relayed to us was that we had to be extremely careful about where we discussed any information that was sensitive in nature because the Israelis are the forefront at collecting intelligence. We were told to never speak about sensitive information in our quarters or any other place other than a huge 10' X 8' vault that we flew in with us.

I left Germany towards the end of the first week of August 1999 flying on a military C-5 cargo plane and arrived on an airstrip in a desolate looking surroundings. My flight was the second of two flights so we were met on the tarmac by our comrades who had arrived the day prior in old Chevy pick-ups painted light brown. We loaded our bags up into the bed of the pick-ups and then jumped into the beds ourselves and headed off to our accommodation.

Our accommodations were large aluminium cans that held 6 of us in 3 bunk-beds if I remember correctly. I don't remember them having AC and it was very difficult to fall asleep at night because it was so hot. The flight training we did with the Israeli Air Force ( IAF )was pretty mundane. It was actually so easy compared to the amount of flight training we did in Germany that I don't remember too much about it.

The life-changing events on this trip took place away from work but not necessarily away from the base we were deployed to. Because the work was not time consuming we had a lot of time to mingle with the IAF members around a small mini-mall type of building that had a bakery, a small convenience store and a arcade/pool hall type place.

The Israelis were very keen to speak with us but for the most part the Americans didn't want to hang out and talk to the Israelis. Not sure if the OSI briefing before we left had put them off or if it is just a normal American tendency but I would say that there were only about 5 of us that really hung out and spoke with them in great depths.

I can't say I had any special feeling for or against the Israelis at that point in my life. I really didn't understand why they were fighting with the Palestinians nor did I really care. But that was soon to change.

I remember a few of the conversations I had with some of the IAF members and it is was very strange. I felt like I had been transported from the year 1999 back to the Alabama or Georgia of the 1950's. The outright racism and hatred for the Arabs as an ethnicity is/was no different to what some white Americans in the south of America felt about black Americans. I had experienced some racist speech from my paternal grandmother who was born in 1921 and lived in Florida. I remember when she had to have an operation done and they were telling her about a blood transfusion she made a point to tell them that she didn't want any coon blood.

I got the same types of speech from the Israelis I spoke with. In fact, I put the the blood transfusion question to them and one told me fiercely that he would 'rather die than take the blood of an Arab.'

We were allowed off of the base a few times while we were there. A couple times we were allowed to drive the 20 or so kilometers to a nearby town that had a McDonald's and another time to the small city nearby named Be'er Sheva that had a large mall.

We also has the opportunity to go to Jerusalem one Saturday which was a really special moment for me. It was such a wonderful experience being able to explore Jerusalem and Bethlehem (after making it through the Israeli checkpoints) as an 18 year old. To crouch down to enter the manger turned church where Jesus Christ was purportedly born. To see the Mount of Olives, the Wailing wall and the golden domed mosque in the skyline of the city was inspiring.

And on the following weekend while the majority of the squadron went to party in Tel-Aviv to part in the discos and on the beaches myself and a small group of maybe 9 others went on a trip to the Dead Sea. We drove down some winding type roads with markers on the side telling us how far below sea level we were with each drop.

We drove along the coast of the Dead Sea and pulled into a parking lot where we got out and trooped up the side of Mount Masada. We walked around for about an hour and half exploring the mountain top before descending sown in some sort of cable car for a small fee.

After we had all loaded up into the van our guide drove us a short distance to a Dead Sea spa. I remember going into the Dead Sea and as I had slid down a small drop off up on Masada I had a series of scratches down the side of my shin that stung like you wouldn't believe upon entering the water. They were actually scabbed by the time we left the spa.

Walking out into the Dead Sea is a very special experience. You get to a point where your feet our no longer touching the sea bottom but you are still standing up right. The water is that dense because of the salt content.

Most of the squadron had left by the last week in August but I was due to leave on the last flight out and for some reason to which my mind cannot recall now our airlift was diverted for some reason so I ended up being bored out of my mind stuck on this base in the middle of the desert with no one except an officer and a handful of Senior NCO's.

Upon returning to Germany I started to research about Israel and Palestine and the problems surrounding them. I found out that most of the Israelis were not from the 12 tribes of Judea but were Europeans who had migrated to that part of the world. That is why I saw some Israeli Air Force members who were extremely Arab looking and others who were as pale as a pearl and said that they were originally Russian or Lithuanian.

I guess I was very fortunate to go when I did because a year later the sister squadron at Spangdahlem went to the same location and never got to step foot off base because the second intifada had started up.

The Froggin Alps

2009-08-09T10:24:00.006+01:00

Last Friday I flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport on ol' RyanAir (who did me another solid by the way!!) from Birmingham to go and visit some family and friends. As I believe I have said before Hahn airport is an old American airbase that they gave back to the Germans after downsizing sometime in the 1990's and it is very remote as most American military bases in Europe tend to be.

I landed and raced to be first through customs of course to call my ride and find out that they were still 20 minutes out. As it was coming up to 8PM when we arrived in the Kaiserslautern area and we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow my friend and I grabbed a quick bite to eat from the absolute best Turkish restaurant in Germany and took the food back to his place.

Early the next morning we woke-up and threw our bags into the car and headed out down the autobahn in the direction of Basel Switzerland. For my money Switzerland is the most beautiful country in all of Europe but it actually was not our destination on this occasion. From Basel we turned southwest in the direction of Geneva only to cross the border into France and continue on our way to our Saturday afternoon destination of Grenoble.

I first visited Grenoble back in 2000 or 2001 with my friend Angel and discovered it to be a very cool city indeed. It is said that it is the Silicon Valley of France and has a world-class university all set in some of the most dramatic scenery in France. To understand the grandness of it you need to imagine a capital letter 'Y'. The letter 'Y' is the plain or basin that the city is set across while along the perimeter of the letter 'Y' is all very large mountains.

My friend Tory and I checked into my usual hotel when I visit Grenoble and after picking up my son we were off racing around the hairpin turns heading up into the mountains in the silver Audi A4 that Tory had rented. The elevation on this particular mountain gets up to about 6000 feet (1900 meters) and the views of the city and the river that runs through it are really quite amazing.

We stopped off on the winding road a few more times that we had planned because my 6 year old son didn't really take to the ride too much and felt a little car-sick. After some fresh air and photographs in the much cooler weather (than below in the city) we were on our way through the mountain before reaching the little village of Saint-Nizer-du-Mouncherotte and turning around to head back down towards the city.

After that short trip up the mountain and because of the lack of sleep from the night before we had to crash at the hotel for a couple hours and grab a siesta while my son watched some weird French cartoons. Upon awaking we drove towards the areas largest shopping centre 'The Grande Place' and walked around before dropping my son of back to his mother at sunset and heading with Tory into the city centre so give him a little tour.

The gem in the crown of Grenoble is what they call 'The Bastille'. It is a fortified structure (that some might call a castle in the nontraditional way) on the side of a mountain just outside the city centre and has bubble like cable-cars taking you up to it unless you choose to take the long walk on the marked pathways. The signs say that this is where the French 'resistance' attacked from but I can't help but imagine it is where they hid form the Germans.

As you can see from the weather it was not so nice on Sunday in the Frog Alps. The mountain range you see here is where we had drove the previous day and taken the previous photo of the city from.

We didn't spend long up on The Bastille as we were hungry for breakfast/lunch and the restaurant up on The Bastille didn't have anything I wanted to try so we came back down the bubble like cable-car and found a nice Lebanese restaurant in the city centre.

We had lunch and then dropped my son back off to his mom before hitting the road again. A seven hour one-way ride to stay 24 hours in Grenoble would have been worth it but the most beautiful and charming town in all of Europe is on the way back towards Geneva so we had to stop.

Annecy is about 40 km southwest of Geneva and boasts the largest Bastille day celebration in all of France, or so I have heard from a frog. Nevertheless, I absolutely adore this town although I must admit on this trip it was the most crowded I had ever seen it. And that was with the weather smelling worse than the formage aisle at Carrefour.

We walked around periodically stopping for coffee when the rain would start to come down especially hard and made our way through the throngs of people for about an hour before stopping off to have simply the best pizza I have had on the entire time I have lived on this continent.

We departed Annecy around 6PM and began our journey back towards Kaiserlsautern. It seemed like there was one gigantic storm cloud over the entire country you and I call Switzerland and that cloud even was generous enough to share itself with southern Germany. We arrived at Tory's house at midnight and went straight to sleep as he had work in the AM and I had a bus to catch back to Hahn.

And here is my (Top Gear) top tip. It took me 6 and a half hours from the time I left my friend's house to when I stepped through my door. It only takes 8 hours to drive from my house in Birmingham to Tory's house in Germany... Airports suck...

Zaragoza-- Land of the Lisps

2009-07-10T13:25:00.007+01:00

In May 2001 not too long after I had returned from Saudi Arabia with my squadron we were assigned a vacation like training deployment. We got word that the deployment was heading to Zaragoza, Spain and it was clear that the work would be very light so my boss got our crew on the list and off we were... in a C-130 HERC cargo plane sitting on nets... Not anybodies idea of a good time.

The HERC is a 4 engine turbo propeller aircraft that moves very slow. It took us around 6 hours to cross France and land in Zaragoza which is located in the norther part of Spain. The HERC's cruising speed is only about 330 MPH (540KPH) and the cargo netting is oh so not comfortable. We would take reflective belts we had to wear while in uniform after sunset and pass it through the netting and rest our foreheads in the other part and lean forward just to get some sleep. But having vehicles and other equipment needed for the deployment strapped down where your feet are supposed to be is something you can never get accustomed to. And pray that you don't feel the urge to relieve yourself.

When we landed in Spain and the doors were opened the heat and humidity entered into the plane instantly and oppressively while 90 odd bodies didn't help the situation. As the buses came we couldn't load our personal effects into the cargo bay quick enough. The air-conditioning was a Godsend and we were quickly on our way off of the Spanish military base that is attached to the public airport and into the middle of a modern, crowded and beautiful city.

We soon pulled up to a wonderful hotel in the middle of the city named Hotel Ramiro l. We were all given our own rooms and I remember speaking with some other friends on the trip about how nice the hotel was. On top of the nice hotel that we didn't have to pay for I think we were also receiving close to a hundred dollars per diem for being there.

Not long after we arrived we were all called into the conference room and were told by some OSI agents that I never saw before that there had been a political assassination that afternoon. They told us that we had nothing to worry about but to be more keen of our surroundings.

Here is the article from CNN about the incident.

Killing prompts Spanish rallies

ZARAGOZA, Spain -- Thousands of people have protested across Spain at the latest killing blamed on Basque separatists.

More than 300,000 people gathered on Monday to protest the killing of Manuel Gimenez Abad, 52, president of the local chapter of the ruling centre-right Popular Party.

Abad was shot on Sunday as he walked with his son to a soccer match.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the killing, officials immediately blamed it on Basque separatist group ETA.

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and other Spanish politicians led the procession through Zaragoza, capital of the northeast Aragon region.

They were joined by Abad's widow Ana Larraz and their two teenage children.

Demonstrators marched holding a banner that read, "For freedom, against terrorism."

An official statement read at the rally, accused ETA of seeking independence through "suffering, injustice, fear and barbarity."

Similar rallies were held in Madrid and other Spanish cities.

Prior to the shooting ETA was thought to be observing an undeclared truce in the run-up to May 13 elections.

The last killing blamed on the group was March 20 in the Basque town of Lasarte.

Polls indicate the Popular Party, opposed to Basque independence, could win for the first time since the Basque country won limited self-rule in 1979.

Sunday's killing was the seventh blamed on ETA this year and the 30th since it ended a 14-month-old ceasefire in December 1999.

ETA has killed more than 800 people in its 33-year-old campaign for Basque independence.

Abad's funeral was held Monday afternoon in his hometown, Jaca, a village of 15,000 people at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains near the border with France.

At the service, the bishop of Jaca, Jose Maria Conget, said, "No ideology can justify terrorism. Terror is the enemy of humanity."

The killing was condemned by politicians, and all parties in the Basque elections except the pro-independence Euskal Herritarrok, widely considered ETA's political wing, suspended campaign events for Monday.

"We will defeat them with the rule of law," said Javier Arenas, president the national Popular Party.

"Basques have got to go and vote on May 13 and tell ETA that they are not wanted, that they have to disappear," said Carlos Iturgaiz, PP president in the Basque region."

So this incident caused the whole of the city to come to a standstill one day and the main boulevard in the city was packed with people marching down it. I remember I had to be to work around 2pm or so and I wanted to make a run to the McDonald's that was close by and unfortunately on the other side of the parade.

I was not going to let 300k protesters get in my way of a Big Mac! So I managed to weave in and out of the parade lines and make it across the large boulevard get lunch and then fight my back through it again... The worst part though was that my fries were cold by the time I walked back to the hotel. And I don't like cold fries.

And as I sat back in the hotel room of my crew-member eating cold fries and watching the news coverage of the protests (in Spanish) we noticed just how strong the lisp of the locals was. The name of the city we were visiting went form Zaragoza to Thaaragothah. Apparently most of Spain has this linguistic trait but it is the strongest in Zaragoza.

Other that I just did a lot of shopping and sight-seeing around the old beautiful city. And showed up for a few hours in the afternoon to do a little work. And I assume we flew back on a C-130 to Germany but I cannot remember. I need to talk to some of my old pal that went with me...

A Dangerous 4th of July Vacation

2009-07-06T13:30:00.010+01:00

I wrote back in May about how I had been sent to an American base in Italy for Operation Allied Force (OAF) in which NATO aircraft were bombing Serbia for a total of 76 days not to long after arriving in Europe.

Looking back on it, the deployment there was probably my most memorable time in the Air Force. I was young and so new to the Air Force I didn't realize that the state we were operating in was only temporary and acceptable during 'war' circumstances. As it was all I knew I imagined it was supposed to be like it was. A situation where a lot of standards were overlooked or forgotten about because of the pressure involved in 'war-like' operations.

After we were sent back home in late June 1999 we were given what was called CAD days (contingency appreciation days) which were accumulated at the rate of 1 day off for every 6 days in a combat zone with a maximum of 14 days. These were great because they were not charged as leave and were designed to allow families to refamiliarize themselves and single guys like me to travel around Europe.

I think we had attained about 6 or 7 CAD days and then with the onset of the 4 day fourth of July holiday weekend it was a jackpot of time off.

And as I had met a girl while deployed to Italy I had a free place to crash at and it didn't take much for me to convince my best friend Angel to tag along with me. He had just arrived in Germany while I was in Italy but we knew each other prior to that from tech. school where he was about a month behind me. We had the same job and got orders to go to the same base and even the same squadron strangely enough.

As it was a 4 day weekend it was impossible to find a rental car on base on such short notice. My car was barely trustworthy enough to drive to work everyday let alone to Italy. But I had enough courage to drive it to the largest Air Force base in Germany named Ramstein AB where there was some cars available to rent. We picked up an Opel Astra four-door and parked my car on in parking lot close by bought some gas coupons and set off with nothing but a European map to get us to our destination in Italy.

We set off headed towards Munich and planned to head towards Innsbruck, Austria then south through the Alps towards an Italian town named Bolzano and then some back roads towards Pordenone which is about 115 km or 70 mi north of Venice.

We set off on the afternoon of Tuesday the 29Th of June and were thrilled that we didn't have to be back to work until the Monday the 5Th of July. It was a pretty uneventful trip through Germany and until we got to Austria. There was quite a bit of road construction through the Alps and we had to get off the autobahn and use detoured back roads. It was quite a pain but some of the scenery we saw was incredible. I remember being on this winding mountain road and seeing a large Austrian castle on the side of another mountain lit up only by the faint light of the night moon.

As Angel and I were only using a road map to guide us and now we were heavily detoured off our original path we decided to stop for the night and sleep as it has become to difficult reading the map in the car with the interior lights. We awoke the next morning to the sun coming over the crest of the mountain at around 9am and continued on our journey.

We had not been driving too long when we found ourselves on a construction marked dirt road and then at an intersection with no signs or indications as to which way we should proceed. We sat there on the smooth dirt road that was awaiting concrete to be laid on it and we decided that we would go left. Off we went down the smooth dirt road leaving a trail of dust behind us. As the road was so smooth and there was nobody insight I decided to increase my speed and soon was hitting 100 kph (60mph) when I noticed a red BMW a ways back flashing me with his lights.

I told Angel and he looked in the side mirror and said that he thought we should slow down and see what he wanted. I had other thoughts and kept going but noticed he was gaining on us very quickly and I could now hear him honking his horn at us while still flashing his headlights. Angel became much more adamant that we stop to see what he wanted and I finally relented and came to a stop. The man in the red BMW started speaking German to us and I sheepishly asked him if he spoke English to which he said that he spoke a little.

He then carried on telling us in heavily accented and slightly broken English that this road we were driving down was new and the bridge connecting it with the mountain on the other side was not finished and if we continued down it at the speed we were traveling we would have surely driven off the cliff dropping to our deaths.

Sweet... because it was definitely my and Angel's dream to re-enact Thelma and Louise with an Austrian twist.

We thanked the man profusely and he told us to follow him as he would take us back to the main road which we did and soon found ourselves stopping in Bolzano Italy for some food. By the time we set off again it was beginning to get dark and it was not too long before Angel and I realized we didn't have much money left.

The problem was that payday wasn't until the 1st (the very next day) and the rental agency had blocked off $250 on my bank card for the guarantee on the car. But more importantly at the time it meant to autostradas as they are littered with tollbooths and most importantly we didn't have anywhere enough gas to make it to Pordenone.

Off we set through the back-roads of the Italian Alps and of course we managed to find probably the only toll road in Italy that is on a small road and not the highway. We pulled up to it but there was no one there. You were supposed to put the money into an automated system similar to a candy or soda machine and the arm would them apparently lift up for you to continue on your journey.

So we sat there. I was thinking we should turn around and backtrack a little and go around it when all of a sudden Angel jumped from the passenger seat and ran up to the arm, lifted it up over his head and waved me through. He dropped it back down and jumped in the car and we took off.

Not long after that the warning light came on indicating that we were almost out of gas. I knew we probably had 50 km (30 mi) before we would stall out so I told Angel we were going to shoot for the nearest town center and wait until the morning when we would have our pay deposited into our account and then gas up.

We stopped at a gas station in the middle of a small town and decided we would wait there and keep trying our bank card in the ATM on the wall of the station as there was a machine in the middle of the 2 pumps where you could insert some lira and get gas similar to the candy or coke machine. Angel decided for some weird reason that he was going to see if he could get any gas from the pumps now. He took the nozzle inserted it into the slot and pulled up on the handle... And diesel flowed out! A total of 20,000 lire (almost $15) worth of gas poured out into our empty car. All we could think was that someone had put the money in and couldn't figure out how to get the machine to work or tried the wrong pump. I don't know. But we had go-go juice.

Between the 20,000 lire worth of diesel we were gifted and the minor amount we had left in the car we were able to make it to my friends apartment early the next morning. We didn't do to much while we were there in Italy that I can remember. I remember taking Angel to the disco I mentioned in my other Italy post as the absolute most beautiful disco I have ever seen and my friends taking us to another disco that I hadn't been to.

Angel and I also went on the base to buy some gas coupons but ended up going up a one-way road on base and getting pulled over my a military cop and thanking God he didn't give me a ticket as that would have gotten back to my squadron and Italy is quite a distance outside the 6 hour rule we are allowed to be distance wise from the base without being on leave.

I believe we left back for Germany on the Friday evening and didn't have as many problems going back like we did coming. Although we were amazed to find out that we were supposed to have a road-tax sticker for driving on any Autobahns in Austria and would have received quite the fine if we were pulled over or found out by the police.

A few weeks after returning I was called into my section chief's office and asked if I knew why OSI (The Office of Special Investigations) would be calling me over to see them. All I could think of was that I had been out of the 6 hour rule distance and maybe that cop had reported me. So, I told the section chief I had no idea why and then stopped off for some lunch before making my way to the OSI building.

I was sat in an interview room and importantly was NOT read my rights. I was asked if I had been traveling anywhere over the past week by the agent and told him that yes I had. I had travelled down to see Munich. He asked me about my driving habits overall and then specifically during that trip. I told him that in general I drive fast when there is no limit on the autobahn but obviously follow any road signs indicating speed limits when I come across them.

Apparently a woman had reported my licence plate as a car that had run her off the road somewhere between Mannheim and Munich. I have to this day no idea and never drove that erratic but I wasn't sure if that was all they had or not. So I told them that I wanted a lawyer and off I went never to hear anything about it again...

Impressions of Turkey Pt.2

2009-07-02T17:15:00.008+01:00

So work isn't to pressing and Turkey is a mysterious and cultural challenge to unwrap. I had done all my shopping in 'the alley' right outside the base's main gate buying up carpets, tailored suits and gold jewelry. On with the exploration...

But one night we thought the base was being over-run as we were woken to the sounds of gun shots and horns honking... But in fact it was a large celebration because the Turkish team Galatasary had beaten an English football team in the UEFA cup final. Weirdos.

Angel and I found ourselves along the main river that runs through Adana on a beautiful and warm day in May. We are strolling along looking the part of curious American Air Force members watching the families sitting along the river bank in a park drinking Turkish tea and eating a variety of foods I can't readily identify. As we stuck out like Michael Jackson at a tanning salon many a Turk came up to us trying to get us to sit down and drink tea with them.

After refusing a few offers we were approached by an individual who made us feel obliged to sit with him and his family and we did so. It was an interesting conversation as his English was not that great and he seemed to be very opinionated. He had 3 children, all of them daughters, there with him and his wife and the conversation turned towards the kids he told us that his youngest child who had flowing long hair and a beautiful pink dress was actually a boy.

Angel and I thought he was joking with us or that something was being mistranslated but he reassured us that the child was a male but they dressed him up as a girl because he was their first son and they were fearful that an evil spirit would take him from them since he was their first born son. So to trick the evil spirit they dressed up the little boy as a girl... Go figure.

So after parting ways with this family we made our way towards this huge mosque they had recently completed building. It was so huge that it could be seen from the flight-line off the base some 10 miles away but it was even more grand once up close As Angel and I walked around the perimeter of the building the prayer let out and we were stuck in a throng of people for a few minutes when a kid looking around 8 years old came up to us and asked in slightly accented English if we would like to go inside the mosque and look around.

OF COURSE WE DID!!

We had been told that this was off limits for us to go inside mosques by the military for our own safety but hell, we were invited in by a little Turkish kid! He took us over towards the main entrance and after telling us we had to take our shoes off he said his dad was there in the mosque and he would introduce us to him.

So we entered inside the mosque and were utterly struck by senses overload. The smell of some sort of incent burning and the noise of some people still praying. Seeing the vaulted ceilings with large beautiful chandeliers and the carefully crafted carving on the walls in Arabic script.

As Angel and I tried to stay out of the peoples ways the young boy had found his father and brought him over to introduce us. He was a short skinny man with a moustache and when he smiled I noticed he was missing quite a few teeth. He told us how he had worked on the base at the supermarket and he really liked it talking with the Americans. I did find it a bit questionable though due to his appearance but placed it in the back of my mind.

He invited us on a personal tour of the city and we took him up on it thinking we would buy the guy some lunch or maybe throw him some cash for his time afterwards. We walked around different parts of the city and he told us about the history of certain things and helped us buy some stamps to send some postcards. After a couple of hours it was past lunch time and Angel and I were definitely hungry so the man took us to a restaurant nearby. It was nothing fancy and the menu contained traditional Turkish food.

While sitting there eating our food the man from the mosque was talking to us about how he had been in the Turkish military and had fought in the Cypriot war between Greece and Turkey in the 70's and even lifted up his shirt to show the 3 bullet wounds that he received for his trouble. All the while pushing back a whole bottle of Turkish Raki. When we were finished Angel and I had no qualms about paying the bill for the boy and his father so I asked the father how much the bill was and he got up to find out at the place where you ordered. He comes back and says 25 million lira for everything so Angel and I gave him the money to pay and as we were walking out I just happened to glance at the prices for the food listed on the board behind the counter and I saw that our meals had only been 2 million lira each. At the time the rate was around 650,000 lira to 1 US dollar and we had paid over $38 for 4 people in Turkey!

I asked the guy at the counter how much he had paid him for our table and he said 15 million lira. I asked him how it could have been so much when the means were 1.5 million to 2 million each and there were only four of us... The Raki... It had cost 5 million alone. So i ran outside and started chasing the guy down the street yelling at him to, 'give me my f*#$in money!'

By now the kid is gone and the dude is walking at a really quick pace. I am still behind him telling him that if he doesn't give me my money I am going to stick my hand down his throat and make him regurgitate everything he had put into his stomach when he begins to run down a side street and then I saw why. There were 3 cops sitting in the intersection looking our way due to my yelling and hollering. I asked the cops if they spoke English to which they said no so I took off running after the dude down the side street. To which the cops started chasing me.

I saw him in a carpet shop off the side street and when he saw me he started running to the back of the carpet shop and I followed him up a pair of stairs and then out a side door down a fire escape. 2 of the cops had stayed outside while the other had gone inside the carpet shop and the cops outside made me stop but never even tried to stop the Turkish dude.

One of the guys in the carpet shop spoke English and translated 'everything' to the police and told us that this guy was a known scammer type and we weren't the first to be had by him and the kid. The cops told us to go back to base and report it there... The kid and the man were not related and the man had never worked on the base.

As we were in the taxi back home I saw the kid through a window on a bus in traffic. This little shitbird waved a 10 million lira bill at me with a big smile on his face....

Chalk it up to the game...

Impressions of Turkey Pt.1

2009-07-01T15:23:00.003+01:00

In May of 2000 I touched down in the south of Turkey with my squadron for a training mission at a local Turkish bombing range. Going off on these short trips was a welcome break for us as it was nice to get away from the day in and day out training taking place in Germany but also it was an opportunity to go off and visit new places on the government's dime.

When we went on these temporary deployments we were paid an extra allowance depending on the setup of where we were sent. In Turkey the amount wasn't so great because we were on an American base in tents with a chow hall. But for some other locations I was sent we got over $100 per day extra allowance.

We landed and had a day or two off before any work was to take place so my close friend named Angel and I wondered off base and into the nearest city to the base. Most Americans only visited the road right outside of the base nicknamed 'the alley' to get any taste of Turkish culture and the wares they had to offer us.

But Angel and I decided to catch a taxi to Adana which was about a 15 minute taxi ride in traffic and cost a couple million lira but that was okay because it only equated to a few dollars at the time. We were dropped off in the city center area and just wandered around. The weather was muggy and overcast when all of a sudden the skies opened up and the rain poured down as I have never seen it do before. The streets were flooded up to my knees in a matter of minutes and we along with the rest of the people we saw were utterly soaked... We packed it in and went home to change.

Incirlik Airbase is owned and by the Turks and jointly operated by them and the U.S. Air Force and it is the only base I ever went to that had a curfew. You had to be on base between 11PM and 6AM as the gates were sealed and you were unable to enter or exit during those times unless on official business. If you were caught off base by the Turkish police or the American military police you were up the creek. You could basically kiss your privilege of going off base goodbye.

Work was very light and we didn't have to put in many hours so that left a lot of time to discover and roam as we pleased. My friend Angel had his eye on a Turkish girl that worked for a military sponsored business that took military members on tours around Turkey in their spare time. She worked alongside a young Turkish kid who couldn't have been older than 18. While Angel was off talking to the girl I would sit there and talk to the kid asking him about Turkey and other things that came to mind.

One day he invited us to go out with him around Adana on the coming Saturday night. We were leery of his proposal as we didn't want to jeopardize our gate card that allowed us to go off base if we were caught out after curfew particularly as we had just recently arrived in country and it would be difficult to be stuck on base for the rest of the time.

But he relented and we agreed to meet him somewhere in downtown Adana in the late afternoon for some coffee and we would hang out form there. Around 11pm as the gates on base were being locked and we were still in the city with no way to make it back in time if we wanted to we were digging into some Adana kebabs and rice with our friend and some acquaintances of his.

After we finished eating he took us to a discotheque and realized found it astonishing how unbalanced the male to female ratio was inside. And our Turkish friend made it abundantly clear that we should under no circumstances approach any of the minuscule amount of woman we did see. He said that we should only talk to the ones that approached us as this was their custom and the best way not to find yourself in a fistfight.

We eventually left and went to eat again before making it back to his parent's apartment where he promised us it was no problem for us to stay until the gate opened back up in a few hours. Angel and I crashed in his bedroom on the floor and awoke around noon time to his mother cooking us eggs and sausage for breakfast. We thanked him for the wonderful time and caught a taxi back to base were nobody was any the wiser that we had not come back through the gate the night prior.

I guess this is my positive impression of Turkey. And I started with the positive because the negative side of it took me a long time to get over. Angel never did get too far with the girl and last I heard the boy who took us out on the town was attending a university somewhere in Germany.

Wait until you hear me chasing people through the city with the cops chasing me... next time.

CELTA-- Mission: Accomplished!

2009-06-30T17:26:00.005+01:00

This past Saturday the 27Th of June was my final CELTA class at Solihull College and apparently I have passed. While I was told nothing explicitly that I had passed it is apparent from the Cambridge University class manifesto that if I was going to fail I would have been told before the three quarter point of the class and given a one-to-one tutorial or something.

Apparently I will receive some certificate from Solihull College in the mail in the coming couple weeks and then the entire classes files get sent to Cambridge University where they are reviewed and then held for 1 entire year. But after they are initially reviewed and the assessors agree with our instructors marks then an official Cambridge University CELTA certificate is sent to us.

So... Do I think the class was worth it?

Yes, absolutely. I have some teaching experience behind me already but a few techniques and methods that are drilled into you are actually quite useful. They are things that you look at and say, 'Why didn't I think of that before?' type things. I imagine that for people who have no classroom experience it would be even more beneficial.

I found the class at Solihull College to be well run and the instructors very approachable and knowledgable. The building was amazing and the classrooms have top of the line equipment that made a trainee-teacher's life all the much easier.

One of the things I personally found the hardest to deal with was the difference in the instructors. They each had their own quirks; likes and dislikes. What one instructor would love another would hate and while it probably had little impact overall whether you passed or failed a training teaching lesson it was hard to take sometimes hearing somebody shoot down what the other praised. But of course out in the real world of teaching you are bound to have directors or educational coordinators who like and dislike different methods and approaches in teaching.

I never found the work for the class to be to difficult just very time consuming and cumbersome. Unless you are an absolute grammar wizz you will find yourself knee deep in a pile of teaching and grammar reference books. Searching through them to refresh yourself with what a defining and non-defining clause is the night before you are due to teach and writing out your lesson plan is a burden on your time.

Out of our class of 12 we had 2 drop out and only ended with 10 people. I am pretty sure all of them graduated minus one who may or may not have passed the course.

The one thing I found very difficult about the course was the 2 lengthy breaks we had. We had our first class at the end of March 09 and then had almost 3 weeks off because of the Easter break before coming back again for the 2nd class. We also had the half-term break in May 09 and I really found these to be inhibitive to my completing the course. I really didn't want to go back after the breaks but I am glad that I did.

If I was to make a suggestion for the course it would be to show either a blank certificate or perhaps the instructors certificate of CELTA to the class at some point between the halfway and three quarter mark of the class. I think it would be a great motivator and a reminder to the students for what they are there for.

I met a few people that I will definitely keep in contact with in my class and I am extremely glad that I did to when I did. Apparently the July/August intensive CELTA course at Solihull College has been cancelled because of one of the instructor's children coming down with swine flu!!

CELTA in Solihull... The Final Stretch!

2009-06-16T18:09:00.004+01:00

CELTA in Solihull is almost complete and I think I am on track to pass the course and receive my certificate... I think.

I have one more assignment due on Saturday that I need to finish off this week on what I have learned from observing other qualified teachers and CELTA trainees like myself over the past few months. I am not expecting any problems with that.

I also have to go to the college tomorrow morning and observe a qualififed teacher doing her thing in the classroom as you need to have observed a total of 6 hours. I only have 3.5 hours under my belt.

And then I have only one more teaching session consisting of one hour on Monday. Other than that, I am on a serious downhill slope.

I cannot wait to have my Saturdays back... And not having to go on the other 2 nights will be a plus too i guess...

What's next?

Well, if the VA comes through for me I will be attending The University of Birmingham in the Fall. The G.I. Bill does indeed kick ass.

Ohhh, and the weather lately kicks ass too....

A Weekend of Wales Watching

2009-06-02T10:37:00.006+01:00

With the weather being absolutely glorious this weekend here in The UK it was a mandatory duty to take the kids out of the city into the countryside. But where to go? Living in Birmingham kinda means that you are smack dab in the middle of England but all the cool and interesting stuff is at least a 2 hours drive away.

I decided that we were going to drive towards the middle of Wales and see what we came across but when you are traveling with 2 young kids you know you are not going to make it too far before they start getting agitated and express their desire to do something other than sit in a moving vehicle.

Not to far past the Welsh border we came across a pleasant looking area near an old novelty steam train engine railroad station where we stopped and let the kids loose. There was a large stream about 100 feet from the station and there was a decent pathway along side the stream where we could walk for a little bit and show the kids how to skip stones. They were more interested in lobbing mini boulders into the water to watch them make a splash and hear the 'kaplunk' sound.

After an hour or so we loaded back up and headed off deeper into the belly of Wales. Until the kids got hungry that is. We found a self proclaimed 'cafe' just off the road we were traveling down and stopped. The food was more expensive that I would have thought and not very good but none the less did the job. £23.50 for 2 battered Cods, a kid's chicken nuggets meal and 2 drinks really does seem over the top.

Eventually we came across some dramatic landscapes that one probably does not typically associate with Wales. Well, people who are not from The UK anyway.

I'm not trying to make it out like these were some huge mountains or anything but as you can see if you look closely in the photo there were cars stopping at that parking area solely because their cars were overheating. Well maybe the one in the photo only did that because it was a BMW.

This particular area is called Snowdonia and there were quite a few people trekking up the hills there. I mean, all the parking spots were filled but there wasn't really anyone around so I figure that they had all walked to the top somewhere. I would have really liked to climb up there but I don't think my pregnant wife and 2 young ones would have appreciated it too much.

We got back into the car and after not long at all we came to the coast. As warm as it was outside I figured there would have been a lot more people at the beach but I soon figured out why there was not more of a crowd. It seems that all the sharpest rocks that the seas have to offer decided to wash themselves up on this particular beach in Criccieth, Wales. Nice...

The kids played in the surf for a few hours before we started our journey back to the land of terraced houses but it took us a lot longer than expected to return. The roads taking everyone back to England were backed up as if border control had started to checks at the English/Welsh border.

Here's to hoping the rest of the summer stays as gorgeous as this past weekend!

My First Military Deployment

2009-05-29T11:29:00.007+01:00

When I first arrived in Germany in the Spring of 1999 I took an immediate liking to my new surroundings. I mean THE reason I joined the Air Force was just to have the ability to travel around the world and knowing that Germany would be my new home for at least the next 24 months I couldn't have been more happier.

Although I had no idea upon arriving the base was in a strange state. One fighter squadron (The 53rd FS) was being deactivated and two (The 23rd and 81st FS) of the other three were deployed to Italy bombing Serbia into the stone age. As I was a first term airman and this was my 1st duty station I had a lot of appointments and briefing to attend that kept me away from my duty location for a couple weeks. When it was time for me to show up I was assigned some menial tasks with a mixture of guys who were waiting to leave the base and others who had just shown up and it was clear we were just there to waste time and make it seem like we were doing something.

After a short period of time I was sent over to the remaining fighter squadron on the base (the 22nd) to start doing actual work with F-16's. Normally I would have had to gone to a location to get certified but as we were actively bombing all that was thrown out the window.

I remember we were working 12 hour shifts and that we would send of 6 to 10 aircraft of at once and wait for about 6 hours for them to come back. It was actually pretty cool for maintainers. Depending on when the previous shift had sent off the prior aircraft we may sit around for an hour or 5 waiting for them to return. In that time I learned how to play dominoes and perfect my hacky-sack technique. The best nights were when there was bad weather and the aircraft had to divert to another base somewhere as that meant we could go home early.

And I thought this was how the Air Force really was. Because I had come into a war like state I knew nothing else. But then sometime in the beginning of May I was told that I would be sent to Aviano AB in northeast Italy with the 22nd Fighter Squadron to replace members of the squadron I should be assigned to, the 23rd Fighter Squadron.

I remember having really mixed emotions about going. I really loved the idea of going to Italy but as we had no idea how long we would be there I had reservations because I was still in a phase where I was getting to know my surroundings in Germany.

But Italy ended up being more fun that Germany... By a country mile!

We were still working 12 hour shifts with I think one day off a week but Italy was a dream for an 18 year old boy like I was. We were living in tents with 9 other guys and sleeping on metal framed cots but it made no difference to me. I loved it. I was put on a crew with 2 other men whom I knew from Germany. The leaser of the crew was a Staff Sergeant with probably 14 or 15 years experience who originally came from Puerto Rice. The other guy was a Senior Airman in his mid to late 20's and came from Georgia.

I learned a lot from them about how things worked in the Air Force. I remember fondly sitting at the End of Runway (EOR) in the back of the pick-up truck waiting for jets to come back throughout the warm May and June Italian nights.

Aviano Airbase was quite the unique place. Particularly Tent City. I would estimate it to be 16 tents across by 32 tents deep and although I only had 10 people in my tent for sure there were cases of 20 men to a tent. Tent City consisted of an American Navy Unit there with EA-6B aircraft, an American Marine Unit with F-18's, The 53rd FS from Shaw AFB, the 493rd FS from RAF Lakenheath, as well as the Portuguese AF with F-18's and the Canadians were there with F-18's as well.

While the Air Force officers were put up in local hotels off of the base the poor US Marines officers (pilot even!) were stuck in Tent City with the rest of us. Thank God it was a no salute zone because them Marines officers would have loved nothing more than making us salute them.

Around Tent City there were makeshifts convenience stores and hooches AKA bar rooms where the people went to blow of steam. I remember as well that we got a pre-screen showing of the new Star Wars movie that came out that year in Tent City.

I remember going to the most beautiful discotheque that I have ever seen in my life in some town between the base and Venice. Inside it was like any other European disco but outback was a large Japanese garden with a dance floor over the middle of it and a series of walkways shooting off of it. It was really amazing and no description I give it would do it justice. Wish I remembered its name.

I met a girl while I was there as well and there will be some future tales regarding my visits to go see her back in Italy soon enough! But by the end of June Milosevic had given up and we were all returning back to Germany and I was to find out what the REAL Air Force was...

Pepsi RAW... And Why I'm Tired of Asda's Antics

2009-05-26T17:53:00.006+01:00

I read on an online news site that I frequently read that Pepsi was releasing a new product geared towards people like me and that the UK was to be the test market. Then later that day I saw what confirmed that on the side of a Birmingham bus as it passed me by. (Also confirming that buses are good for something other than keeping bad drivers behind the wheels of those huge monstrosities where they are easily spottable.)

The new Pepsi product is their first in over 10 years or something and I think they are hitting into quite a unique market. The product is called Pepsi RAW and is completely made of all natural ingredients except for the carbonation of course. I looked online and found a little bit of info on the product and saw that it was to be available in pretty much all the major UK grocery stores including my local one, ASDA.

So I went in there to buy some but there is nothing anywhere in the store and no one has a clue what I am talking about. And really this was the excuse I had been looking for to go to another supermarket other than the local ASDA that I shopped at regularly or the local Morrison that I never took a liking to.

I have had a series of issue with ASDA as of late. First off they move products way to often. I mean for the first 3 years almost nothing ever moved. And now in the past year they seem to move shit every month to a new location. And not just from the top of the aisle to the bottom but moving a section of products to a total new aisle in a completely new area of the store.

Products that I have been buying for 3 years just disappear and no one has an answer as to why. Like Bertolli pasta sauce. Other products they never seemed to have and never get anyway. Like Green Beans. Damn store has 4 shelves full of peas in a whole variety of ways but no damn green beans.

Then they have a full stock of Ben & Jerry's ice cream but don't stock the best flavor they make named Cherry Garcia.

But the thing that they have done that really is driving me away was this whole thing about not wanting to provide any shopping bags. If I pay £150 to £225 on grocery's, damn it I want free bags. I like plastic shopping bags. No, really I do. I use them for a multitude of purposes including as liners for my small waste baskets I have around the house.

Why should I, the well paying customer have to pay you 5p for some crap green bag that I can't fit much into when it doesn't even fit my small waste basket! Don't tell me the environment! I understand that these bags can take 1000 years to degrade into the earth but that isn't my problem. Government should pass a law making the companies who produce the bags to make them more friendly to the Earth. Not try to push the stores to get me to stop using them.

So, one night after class in Solihull I stopped by the Sainsburys and went in because I was sure they would have Pepsi RAW and sure enough they did. And I only intended to buy that but I found a whole range of Bertolli pasta sauces, massive amounts of green beans, mini pretzels, fresh bagels, Pizza Express frozen Pizzas and most shockingly of all... FRANK'S RED HOT SAUCE!!!!

No more begging friends on the Air Force bases in Suffolk to bring it to me!!

And they let me take as many orange plastic shopping bags as I wanted... Free of charge!

And the Pepsi RAW tastes pretty good. Less carbonation but pretty close in flavor. The cans are the same size as a traditional Red Bull can but they have old school glass bottles as well...

A Trip to the Cadbury Factory

2009-05-25T00:08:00.007+01:00

I had one of my old friends from my Air Force days fly in from Frankfurt for the weekend and as the Bullring was closed for most of it I booked us and my kids on a little excursion over to the Cadbury Factory on the outskirts of the city.

I booked the tickets online and made my way over there but for some strange reason the listing in my GPS of 'Cadbury World' was a residential area of terraced houses. So as the time for our appointed time was approaching I had to call 118-118, which is the UK's version of 411 to have them text me the phone number and address of the place.

We were actually only about a mile away and made it there with 10 minutes to spare.

And in fact it didn't seem to me that you really needed to book ahead. When we arrived we checked in with a woman at the cash registers and she told us to go around back to the Cadbury Essence and then come back here after that. So we walked around back and went through the Cadbury Essence 'show' telling us some things about how Cadbury was started by some holligrams. Then we were 'treated' to a cup of liquid chocolate which was kind of like having a drink of a choclate bar that was left inside the car during your last family holiday to Florida.

The kids played on a playground setup outside the exit of the essence tour for a few minutes and we then walked back around the building to where we walked into what was supposed to be an Amazon jungle scene and then an 1800's old Birmingham square. In my opinion it was kind of lame and could definitely use some other interactive features.

Then there were 2 sit down 'shows' where we were explained more in detail the history of Cadbury and how they were ahead of their time in employee rights and the such. And then the second was about the process of chocolate going from the cocoa plant to the candy bar.

Then we walked through the actual factory where chocolate bars were being heated and cooled and then wrapped. For some reason they don't allow any photography or video in there.

Then it was on to this ride that had a huge line (queue) when we first walked by it going into the factory but wasn't so bad when we actually came to stand in it after walking the factory. It basically was a train track type of car ride. Imagine the old "It's a Small World After All' tour at Disney World crossed with little chocolate beans that looked more like turds.

Some how my friends and I managed to get a car all on our own while the kids were in another car... We looked pretty gay getting out of the car at the end with no kids... I would post the photo but my friend would kill me....

Ohhh, I forgot we walked out of there with more chocolate bars than I could count between the lot of us. I imagine 50 at least. They hand them out like... Well... Candy...

Celta in Solihull... Halfway done.... +pics

2009-05-24T23:43:00.003+01:00

Last Saturday was our last day before breaking for the half-term break and I and a classmate went out with a bang...

We went to the main building to get some snacks on a 10 minute break and apparently the school was locked down for the half-term and we found a way in and set off the building's alarms. The caretaker was not too happy when we crossed paths.

Upon returning back from the half-term break I will be switching from the upper-intermediate level students to intermediate. There are clear advantages and disadvantages with this. Most importantly, the student's are not really able to stump you with grammar questions. But the big positive with the upper-intermediate is that you do not have to grade your own language when speaking with them. They understand most things well enough that you can speak normally and when they do not know what a word means they will ask you.

Anyway, I have no assessed teaching lessons to prepare this week and that is a needed break. I have a lot of other paperwork I need to catch up on and file away and doing lesson plans has made that quite a large pile.

So here are some pics I took in one empty room that was not in use at the time of the Tudor Grange House located on the Solihull College campus.

British Things That Make You Go Hmmm #3

2009-05-20T22:20:00.005+01:00

What's up with the dudes out collecting scrap metal in Birmingham? Are they like this all over Britain?

In case you do not have a clue what I am on about basically every other day (or so it seems) some guys in a British version of a pickup truck drive up and down the streets really slow playing some trumpety sounding tune while screaming something that I for the life of me cannot grasp over and over and over...

Do they expect me to run out waving my hands emphatically in the air because I heard their bellows?

I mean if I have some scrap metal I leave it out in front of the house for them to take anyway. I have put things outside and had people come and take them literally right after I plopped it down.

I have also came close to having a physical altercation with one of these brutes a couple years back. He basically wandered into a private area of my property and decided he was going to help himself to some metal items I had there. I saw him from upstairs and came down as he was putting it into the back of his truck and asked him what he was doing trespassing on my property and stealing my belongings.

He got really pissed and took the piece out of the truck and said, 'Here, take it!'

To which I told him its not the point of the item its the fact that he opened a door and walked into my property and removed something without asking first. And I jokingly informed him that where I come from you can get shot in the back for something like that...

So he looks at me and says, 'So why don't you go back there then!'

And I told him frankly that I was here doing research on the 2 wars America whooped Britain in and the other one that we saved their ass in...

Don't think he knew what I was on about...

And I guess I could consider the following to be 'Hmmm #4' but I don't want to because it is so small...

But is the proper way you secure a towed vehicle here in the UK??

Celta in Solihull... Halfway done....

2009-05-19T11:21:00.004+01:00

I have been taking this CELTA course now for almost 2 months now and we are just about halfway done. We have a short break for the half-term next week and it is definitely a well placed rest.

Normally I teach on Thursdays but as chance would have it a classmate rang me on Sunday as I was preparing my lesson for Thursday and asked if I could switch with them for this week. I was very happy to do so as that means that now I do not have to really to do any lesson preparation for about 2 weeks.

There are some assignments I need to work on though. I am finding those more difficult than the rest of the class for some strange reason.

But overall I am positive the class has made me a better teacher. Particularly because of the Saturday theory classes we have that involve some great teaching concepts and methodologies to utilize inside the classroom.

I have found out that I am excellent at teaching vocabulary but need to vastly improve my ability to present grammar and form.

As for the class in general then I would recommend it and if you have the ability to take it at Solihull College then I would recommend that as well. The CELTA instructors have a lot of experience and definitely know what they are talking about. They are quite helpful and very available and approachable for guidance outside and inside the class. Feedback seems to be on par with what I would expect but the ideas they give you as to what you could have done to improve a lesson is insightful.

The Tudor Grange house where we teach at Solihull College is amazing. It is like some sort of mansion you would see in a Jane Austin film adaptation or an old haunted mansion form the Scooby Doo cartoons. There are old fireplaces and beautiful carvings of different objects in the wooden frames. I will try to take some photos of the inside on Thursday to post.

10 year anniversary pics

2009-05-12T22:57:00.005+01:00

As promised...

Since my laptop was being repaired and I couldn't post any photos from when I first landed in Germany with that particular blog I will post them now...

The view from my dorm, building 177 room 301 on Spangdahlem Airbase Germany. All those semi-circular concrete structures are called Hardened Aircraft Structures (HAS for short) and house F-16 or O/A-10 aircraft.

The room was about 12' by 10' and I had it all to myself. I did though have to share a toilet and shower with one other guy.

Here is the other side of the room and the sink and mirror area right before the bathroom door. As you can see I didn't have much to bring with me at 18 years old.

The said bathroom area that I had to share.

An old German village that I took my first drive off base through.

The office where we were when we weren't working and weren't supposed to be as opposed to where we hid when we were supposed to be working.

An organized tour that we had to take when we first arrived to the closest city named Trier. Yes, that is a monkey on some sort of musical instrument.

This building in Trier is actually a McDonalds...

It was the Busiest of Times... It was the best of times???

2009-05-09T20:53:00.005+01:00

I guess it has been absolutely nuts for me and my family over the past month. I cannot recall ever being so busy in my life... And believe me that is saying a lot considering that I was assigned to a fighter squadron in the U.S. Air Force for almost 4 years.

Between preparing and then attending the CELTA course in Solihull 3 times a week I have also revamped the inside of my business and moved into a new home. The latter was probably the most stressful though as my former landlord decided he was going to be too cool for school.

I decided to take a house in Small Heath area of Birmingham back in the first week of April and of course after putting down a £400 deposit I attempted to call the landlord of the flat I was in immediately to give him my 30 day notice. As the apartment I was in was in good condition my intention was to try to find someone I knew who may be looking for a decent flat to move in. This way I wouldn't have had to pay the full 30 day notice until the 6th or 7th of May and the landlord would not lose out on any income.

So on the night of the 6th I rang his personal mobile number 2 times about 20 minutes apart. No answer.

Again the next evening I tried to call him again 2 times and again no answer. Even worse in my opinion was that I never had a returned call from the 4 times I tried to ring him.

So a couple day later I went down to the shop under the flat and asked if they had seen the landlord and if they could verify that I had the right number for him. They told me that I did but that they thought he was out of the country as he hadn't been by the shop to collect the rent from them when he was supposed to.

With that I kind of put the whole affair to the back of my head as I had so much other stuff to focus on. I tried calling him again on Monday the 13th of April and again no answer so I decided to send him a text message. I basically just wrote that I had found another place and that I would be moving out on the 1st of May. I still had no response but I did get a delivered message and again but it to the back of my mind.

I tried calling him again on the following Monday the 20th and he finally answers his phone. I tell him that I have been trying to contact him and that I will be moving out on the 1st of May. He took issue with that. He told me that he would take my 30 day notice from today (the 20th of April) and that if I find someone suitable to move in the flat that he would reimburse me the amount for whatever days I would be owed.

So I told the landlord that I didn't agree with him because I had in all earnest tried to contact him. At that time, after hanging up the phone with him I thought the easiest way out of this was to get someone willing to take the flat on the 1st of May or earlier.

When I got home I told my wife of the conversation and we both tried over the next two days to find a suitable individual. We found a couple people interested but come the evening of the 22nd we made a crucial decision. As we felt that the landlord was being unfair with us and our rent was due again on the next day (the 23rd) we decided that it was in our best interest to "do a runner."

We packed up all out things that night and moved out belongings that would not be needed for a week to a friends home and then with the other things and the kids we drove to my wife's sister's home. We cleaned the apartment to a good standard and left the key with the caretaker of the building.

Of course the landlord was not pleased when he came to realize this. He and I played phone tag for a few days and then had a conversation where he relayed to me what he thought he was owed. He had now changed his mind and decided that he would only take a payment for rent up to the 9th of May and not the 19th of May. I told him that I would never agree to that as I felt it was 100% his fault that he did not receive my notice. I called him 4 times on the 6th and 7th of April and he did not answer his phone nor did he return any of the 4 calls I made to him.

On top of that I felt aggravated that I was put into a position where I had to move in the middle of the night like a bunch of Carnies with my kids. I had been made to be uncomfortable and leave my home before I had desired to because of his unjust stance. And of course he lost 2 weeks rent I would have paid him because of his audacious stance.

Anyway we are in our new place and getting comfortable with that. The house we have moved into is an old 4 bedroom Victorian home. For the area of Birmingham I am living in it is in excellent condition. I really only have three complaints and they are bearable really.

1) The water pressure is very poor.
2) The parking is very difficult particularly at night. When I come home from my CELTA course on Mondays and Thursdays I will not find any parking nearby the house.
3) The bottom floor toilet is only accessible by... Going out the back door into the garden. But we of course do have a full bathroom on the middle floor of the house.

Almost There!

2009-04-24T12:39:00.002+01:00

I just recieved a call from the Mac shop in the Bullring shopping centre and will hopefully have a working laptop this afternoon...

keyboards

2009-04-16T19:09:00.003+01:00

I am still without my laptop and have to frequent internet cafes to actually get anything done on the net. To hell with using the net on a mobile... Work still needs to be done on that front...

I spoke with the Mac shop in the Bullring yesterday and they said all my parts are in and that the labor should commence immeadiately.

The main reason I hate having to go to internet cafes is that the damn keyboards drive me crazy. Sometimes you have an American keyboard but a UK computer so the computer over rides the American keyboard and other times you have a UK keyboard but an American pc...

I want my standard American keyboard and laptop back... It drives me nuts...

But on a side note at least the UK keyboard is not as bad as the French keyboard... You have to be deranged to like that non sense!!

My 10 Year Anniversary

2009-04-09T15:49:00.006+01:00

Yup, 10 years ago today I landed at Rhein-Main Airbase on a military chartered civilian aircraft that departed from Atlanta. Rhein-Main was located on the south side of Frankfurt International Airport and has since closed and been swallowed and redeveloped by the International Airport. The only building I still recognize on a regular basis is the large old hangar that Lufthansa Technik now operate out of. I tend to always taxi right by it when I fly from Birmingham International to Frankfurt International.

I remember stepping off the large passenger plane and walking across the tarmac into the arrival terminal and having to show my military ID and orders to some guy before being able to go and get my luggage. In the luggage hall there were all kinds of signs talking about how your bags could be searched and that this item and that item were not permitted.

Typically when you arrive like this you are met by your prearranged sponsor who would either sign out a vehicle from motor pool to come and get you or drive their own personal vehicle.

As I was arriving at a time when the squadron I was assigned to was deployed to Aviano Airbase in Italy to bomb Serbia I had no one there to pick me up and I had to take this navy colored school bus from the terminal to Spangdahlem Airbase on my own accord.

I do not remember the exact details of how I figured out which shuttle to catch but I do remember it weaving in and out of Army installations throughout the Frankfurt area before hitting an open stretch of autobahn.

I remember being amazed by the scenery and landscape as we drove down the autobahn. The hills and villages are really unique sights compared to what you generally see when driving down American highways.

We eventually left the autobahn around a large town named Wittlich and took some really windy and narrow roads towards Spangdahlem Airbase.

About 2 and half hours after we left the arrival terminal we pulled up to the main gate of my new base and had our military IDs checked before proceeding to billeting AKA the base hotel.

I went inside the hotel and used a phone to call my shop to announce my arrival. They sent over 2 young airman like myself, both of whom I recognized from tech school and they drove me to the dorm manager to get me a set of keys for my new place.

Unfortunately the photos I have of this are all on my laptop at the Mac shop...

Computerless

2009-04-07T13:50:00.004+01:00

My laptop is with the Mac people getting a new LCD screen and I am only able to use internet cafes for the time being...

My Apprentices

2009-03-31T12:28:00.006+01:00

I dropped off my younger brother and sister to the Birmingham airport this morning so they could catch their flight to Boston via Amsterdam. They arrived about 12 days ago and boy, if ever there were 'house cats' these 2 are them. They are not the type to travel outside of their element for too long. It is funny how siblings can be raised in the same environment but be so different than each other.

I am not hating on them for not liking the food in the UK as the pickings are definitely slim when it comes to locating great food but these 2 had issues almost everywhere we went even while on the continent. If it wasn't McDonald's or pizza they were looking at it as if it was meant to eat them and not the other way around.

We were able to acquire cheap flights to Frankfurt Hahn and then make our way across to Paris before flying out of Charles de Gaulle airport on this past Wednesday night. As well I took them to Stonehenge and briefly stopped through Salisbury and Bath since we drove all that way to see rocks in the middle of an English field.

I have previously written about my experiences with Ryanair and this one-way flight to Frankfurt Hahn was probably the worst flight experience I have had with Ryanair. It seems we were fortunate to be in the midst of a stag party en route to somewhere and they were just plain out of control on board and the flight crew did nothing but facilitate them in getting even drunker on an 11AM flight.

We landed at Hahn and caught a bus to Luxembourg city where my firstborn son lives with his mother and stayed there in a hostel for 3 nights. I had never stayed in a hostel before as I believe they would disagree with me. In fact unlike my sister and brother I have never even been inclined to see a scary movie that involved a hostel so my expectations were pretty low.

They should have been lower. Really. Much lower.

I do not ask for much from a hotel when I stay in one. I mean clean linen/towels, an electrical outlet to charge my phone and laptop and decent shower. I can deal without TV/cable, a refrigerator or a nice view. This hostel had none of these things except clean sheets. And we had to go fetch those from reception. I had to borrow some towels from my son's mother because the hostel charged for them. They also charged for soap and I am really surprised they didn't charge for toilet paper although I am sure they tried but realized it was to the benefit of their cleaning staff to not do so.

The 'shower' was especially noteworthy for its terribleness. I have been in rain storms that got me wetter than this little spout coming out of the wall in the bathroom. And even better was the squeegee you had to use afterwards to steer the water on the floor towards the drain. Or maybe the the best part was that the bathroom lights worked on a motion detector and when you closed the cloth curtain to enclose you in the corner the lights would magically go off making you wave your hand outside the curtain trying to get the lights to switch on. You decide.

Anyway Luxembourg is a really cool city to explore and in my view maybe the most underrated capital city in all of western Europe. I wore them out with a lot of walking up gorges and down valleys and my brother got really cool blisters because he thought it would be gangsta to wear some heavy Timberland boots.

We took a short train ride to the nearby German city of Trier as my brother felt like he was missing something from the last time he was there and I stopped by there. Apparently he was. The crowd of people was especially strong for some reason on this particular Saturday and all the Germans seemed to be competing in an event to see who could irritate us the most by stopping in front of us or creating a wall of humans walking at a snail's pace.

They succeeded fairly quickly as my brother takes to people about as well as British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith takes to answering questions about her husband's taste in pornos.

We left Luxembourg train station on a TGV train heading to Paris on Monday afternoon and made it to Gare de l'Est in slightly more than 2 hours. I had booked a hotel in the area near Jardin Luxembourg on the south side of the river Seine and after staying in a hostel it seemed like a chateau.

My brother seems to have this notable ability to act as a magnet for weirdos. He was approached by one particular nutter who seemed to admire his aggression and made some gorilla motions while using both his hands to indicate on himself that my brother had huge nuts. And the guy who was in the middle of the subway train with a bag full of the type of stuffed dolls you win at carnivals. He had characters ranging from Superman to Homer Simpson and was performing a play with them. Unfortunately my French is too poor to understand the storyline between Homer and Pokemon.

We walked around and hit the normal tourist areas for a couple days and I even (for some reason) took them to the one tourist area I have always avoided. The area between Sacre Coeur and Montmarte is particularly seedy. I never get used to seeing sex shops next to the post office.

On a positive note I did have the best pizza I have ever had outside of America. I highly recommend Cafe di Roma on the Champs-Elysees although to eat on that road one must apparently be prepared to part with €14.20 for a 1 liter bottle of Pepsi. On a plus note they did give us some ice for free.

We eventually got tired of the bad weather and headed to the airport early for the 2100 flight to Birmingham on FlyBe.

And then I had to deal with the fish incident... Seems there are as many nutters in Birmingham as there is in Paris.

Something's Fishy!!

2009-03-26T23:14:00.002Z

I have been away from Birmingham for a few days because my little brother and sister are visiting from America and I took them to Germany, Luxembourg and France.

I was planning to write about that tonight until one of the weirdest things to ever happen to me occurred today.

First off I must tell you that I have been borrowing a friends car for a month or so while I have been trying to get finance for a new car. It is a decent beater that gets us from A to B and helps me to stay true my American heritage and remain free from utilizing public transport.

So last night my wife picked the 3 of us up from Birmingham airport and when I kicked her out of the driver's seat I smelled a faint odor. Or at least I think I did. I didn't pay much attention to it as it was that faint. Maybe my wife had a tuna fish sandwich before she picked us up.

So today I had an appointment at Barclays in Small Heath and when my brother, sister and I got in the car I smelled a stronger smell of fish but thought that maybe it was the surrounding area. We drove over to Barclays and they stayed in the car while I was jerked around in Barclays. When I came back outside and opened the driver's side door the smell overpowered me. It smelled worse than 8 cans of shark shit.

I quickly came to the conclusion that there was some dead animal inside the car or in the engine bay. It smelled like fish but it had to be a rat because there are some serious sized rats around here and I am no where near any water.

So we pop the hood and find this...

Yes, indeed that is a 10" gutted silver fish sitting on the manifold of a Vauxhall.

I have no idea how it got there. I called up the guy I am borrowing the car from and he confirmed that I have the only key to the car. There is no spare key. So just how this now half cooked fish got there will be a mystery that is probably never solved.

My New Problem

2009-03-22T16:27:00.002Z

And the poor get poorer...

I shut down my laptop this morning to take it with me while I was on the go and there was absolutely nothing wrong with my screen. I pull out my laptop to look at something and find a white 6" by 4" rectangle box illegally occupying the bottom right hand corner of my screen.

I am not that upset because the way things have been going for me lately I am accustomed to things going from bad to worse. But at the same time I am perplexed to how it occurred. My laptop was at my side for my short walk and went through no traumatic events that would make incur its wrath.

But now I open my laptop and half the screen is now white. It has gotten much worse. And when I pressed on the back of the screen it got slightly better but obviously that is not a long term solution.

Mac shop; (in the Bullring) here I come....

BBC2 wants me to grow my own drugs! UPDATE!

2009-03-18T10:40:00.006Z

I have an update to the post that has brought much traffic to my blog in the recent weeks that you can find here!

I received the hops and lavender pillow that I ordered from eBay in the mail yesterday and was quite curious as to how it would work on me. I paid a total of £7 for the pillow and the shipping which seemed worth it to me considering that it was ready-made to use as opposed to trying to source hops and lavender and a small pillow to put in.

Once I opened the small package the scent of lavender was immediate to myself and anyone who walked into the room even though the pillow was still sealed in a small plastic covering.

When I was contemplating going to lay down I busted it open and kept it in front of me to see what the effects would be and I can say after maybe 5 minutes I started yawning... Frequently. I would yawn maybe every 30 to 45 seconds in fact. Then after another 10 minutes my eyes were very heavy and I had to fight to keep them open.

But then after a few more minutes the yawning and heavy eyes was not so constant. I now felt mildly tired and stayed awake for maybe another hour or laying down on my living room carpet. I then decided to go lay down in bed and brought the small pillow upstairs with me wondering how long I would lay in bed as at this point it was perhaps 90 to 120 minutes before I would normally fall asleep.

I estimate I was sleeping within 10 to 15 minutes of having the black bag underneath my chin as I lay on my side. Tonight I will try using the pillow only when I lay down in bed and not before and post write here on this post how that worked out.

Here is a photo of the pillow next to my passport so you can have a proper perspective regarding how actual size of it.

In the News

2009-03-17T20:07:00.004Z

When I write of the events of the past almost 10 years I try to write about them during the same month or week that they occurred years prior. A month like March is particularly hard to write in because I can remember so few things occurring in this month. Thinking about that maybe this is because I generally do not like the month of March. There are no holidays during March and generally the weather is still cold and wet and you are just waiting for the winter to end.

So with that I give you this...

Finn creates USB 'finger drive'

A Finnish computer programmer who lost one of his fingers in a motorcycle accident has made himself a prosthetic replacement with a USB drive attached.

Jerry Jalava uses the 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the "nail", to store photos, movies and programmes.

The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer when in use.

Mr Jalava says he is already thinking about upgrading the finger to include more storage and wireless technology.

"I'm planning to use another prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have removable fingertip and RFID tag," he wrote on his blog, ProtoBlogr.net.

Half of Mr Jalava's left ring finger had to be amputated last summer after he crashed into a deer while riding his motorbike near Helsinki.

He says he was inspired to create the unique storage device when doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB "finger drive" after finding out that he was a software developer.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7949018.stm

Published: 2009/03/17 16:45:05 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Mind the Gap?

2009-03-16T13:18:00.004Z

I went to a new dentist's office this morning looking to get a tooth fixed that a filling fell out of a few years (yes, I did say years) back. I mind was already made up before going inside that I was probably going to have the tooth pulled but I was interested in perhaps having the tooth saved if possible.

I had gone to a dentist to have it repaired not long after I arrived in Birmingham but was told by the dentist that it would first needed a root canal. I have had one root canal before in my life and like most people, enjoyed it about as much as one would enjoy a person sticking toothpicks down into a hole they made in your tooth.

I do not have a bad history with dentists just the methods they utilize to numb pain. I typically require the highest level of local anesthesia allowed legally to a human being and yet I still feel the drill. Once while under general anesthesia having my wisdom teeth removed while in the military (I wanted a few days off) I woke and sat up in my chair scaring the dentist out of his seat.

So the first dentist I went to a while ago couldn't get very far because the pain was too intense. He gave me a prescription for some horrible tasting antibiotics and I never returned but he did put a temporary filling in.

So last Friday I woke up with a bubble on my gums underneath where the said tooth is located and decided that as I will be traveling this week maybe I should have it looked at... And probably pulled.

So I looked on Yell.com for a dentist in the area that could offer general anesthesia or nitrous oxide because I am a scared little girl when it involves drills inside my mouth and found one not to far away in Edgbaston. I called asked if they accept NHS patients and was told much to my surprise by reception that they did. An appointment was made for Monday morning.

I left the house early with my wife because I knew that there would be forms to fill out and what not and because I had a feeling I would be behind a truck that would slam into a white van and so it was. We arrived at the dentist's surgery about 20 minutes before my appointment and I filled out my forms.

I was seen by the dentist only a few minutes late and had my tooth looked at. The options where then laid out to me and I was told that it would cost £300 to perform the root canal and cap it with a porcelain filling. I was quite taken aback by these words as I was told that they accepted NHS patients and after a long conversation that I couldn't be bothered to repeat found out that they do 'accept' NHS patients but that they only accept NHS payment for certain treatments.

And root canals nor porcelain fillings are included. But the anesthesia and the tooth extraction are.

Is £300 worth not having a gap in the back of my mouth?

All Greek'd Up

2009-03-13T20:22:00.004Z

Tonight I went out to a Greek restaurant here in Birmingham named Zorba's to eat with my wife and children. I found them on the Internet and decided that we would give it a shot.

The exterior of the restaurant was beautiful and stood out from the buildings around it like a rose blossoming from a crack on the sidewalk of Birmingham. I cannot recall seeing any shopfront like it in all of the 4 years I have been in Birmingham. Perhaps it was due to the lighting showcasing the shop in the night but it was very impressive.

Too bad that was the best the place had to offer.

The interior was better than average but slightly conflicting between traditional Greek and Victorian era architecture. In the main dining room it had Victorian style chandeliers and other ceiling fixtures but ostentatious Greek art and drawings on the walls. In a side dining room that we ate in the decor was cool and very much in tune with the outside of the restaurant but the white Xmas lights flashing kind of made it look a little tacky.

We were given menus and took out time looking over them as we waited for our drinks. The starter menu was more expansive than the main course for some reason and when I think of Greek food I am sorry but lasagna and rigatoni are not up there at the top. We ended up ordering 4 starters and just nibbling on them between us.

We ordered one of my favorite salads named Caprese, an assortment of Greek sauces including Tzaziki and hummus, and a few other dishes. None of them were particularly any good and only the sauces and fresh pita bread with Haloumi cheese was really any good. A plate of Calamari rings tasted like something I could buy frozen from the supermarket and cook at home on my own. In fact most of the starters were like that.

I think they over-charged me as well. I guess the moral of the experience can be summed up in 3 words.

Book, judge and cover.

UK vs USA universities

2009-03-12T20:20:00.008Z

As promised.

So there are a few world-class universities here in the UK and a great deal of very good ones. Virtually all of them are in England as is to be expected as the majority of the population is in England.

Here in the UK education is only compulsory up to the age of 16 at the moment all though there is talk of bumping that up to 18. In America when you apply for universities fresh from high school your grade point average (GPA) and your Standard aptitude test (SAT) scores are basically what universities look at. In the UK the students take what is known as A levels in certain subjects which the universities here look for.

So in America you apply in your senior year (12Th grade when typically students are 17 or 18) of high school for the universities you would like to go to and they send acceptance letters in the spring I believe.

Here in the UK the students take their A levels and apply but through a computer system named UCAS. Apparently it is the only way to do it. You pay £17 and get to apply for up to 5 programs.

And then the differences are much greater.

In the UK bachelors degrees are typically 3 years and not 4 as they are in America and that is because the whole approach and methodology to attaining the degree is polar opposite.

In American universities you have to achieve 120 credits in order to attain your bachelors degree in any given subject with each course being worth 3 credits. Simple math tells you that 120 credits divided by four years of school is 30 credits per year with each class being worth 3 credits equals 10 courses per academic school year.

Those courses you take are structured into subjects and you are entirely free to choose what courses you want to take BUT you do need to attain a certain amount of your 120 needed to graduate from a variety of subjects. For example you may need 12 of those credits to be English and 9 to be in Math even though you are pursuing a History degree.

In England if you are taking a degree program in History then ALL of your courses are generally to do with history.

In my eyes this is better. Your knowledge level and understanding in that specific subject will be far superior in practically all instances than someone who takes a 4 years degree in the same subject at an American university as they do not focus solely on the degree that will named on your shiny piece of paper.

3 years of history based classes to attain a history degree or.... 4 years of history, math, science, English, PE, and a foreign language to attain a History degree????

Seems like an easy choice to me.

Visit day at B'ham Uni

2009-03-11T19:50:00.003Z

This morning I had an appointment at Birmingham University's School of Education for one of their many 'visit days'.

Overall it was a waste of time with the exception of actually being able to meet the head of the program I am very interested in and the head admissions guy for the School of Education and put a face to the emails. These two individuals were a tremendous source of guidance and insight and I really look forward to hopefully working with the head of the program starting in the next academic school year.

The reason why I found it a waste of time other than them though is that the majority of people at this 'visit day' were all teenagers and the table of events was obviously more geared towards their needs. I am what is called a 'mature student' here in the UK and I am not in need of looking for the on-campus dorm that is closest to the local watering hole and the like. So while I did take a quick tour of some of the beautiful university grounds I still ended up waiting almost 3 hours to speak with the head of the program.

Indeed it was worth it in the end though, as she outlined what I needed to do to be accepted into her program. As all of my qualifications are American based and I have not been in school since people were doing the Macarena she requested some supplemental work from myself to assist her in making a sound judgement on my application.

Fair enough. She asked for 1500 words on 'Why Education is Important."

Quite the broad subject title, yes, I know.

Perhaps tomorrow I will outline the differences between a UK and American degree program.

Feeling the 'Crunch'

2009-03-08T23:45:00.005Z

A week ago or so I wrote how I tried to do my part for the UK economy and get myself a new Land Rover but was rebuffed at every turn.

So I was forced to 'settle' for helping France or Germany's economies as Mercedes, Volkswagen and Citroen treated me the way that I have come to expect them to. That being salesmen trying to sell me a car. Land Rover seem to think that cars are meant to sit in showrooms and seaports or something.

So after agreeing to prices and options the next step is for the dealership to acquire finance on our behalf. Less than 2 years ago when we bought our last new car the 0% finance was approved over the phone at the dealership in about 15 minutes but of course we are in a severe recession and banks are tighter with credit than a frog's butt underwater even though governments are trying to create circumstances and incentives for them not to be like that.

But it seems they can't help themselves.

Even though my wife has a long and perfect credit history and I have a short and perfect one we were still turned down at every dealership we went to. We are utterly amazed. Even the car manufacturer that we bought a new car from in 2007 and paid on time every month for 17 months before paying off the total sum turned us down... WTF!!

So, I made an appointment with a manager of the dealership that we had bought a car from before and explained to him the situation. He is currently trying speaking with the higher ups at the finance company trying to get this sorted.

I sort of feel bad for the dealerships all around the country. I saw in the news a few days ago that new car sales in February were down almost 22% from February 2008. And that in late January it was reported that 300,000 people were turned down for car loans in the UK for a 6 month period in late 2008.

So there are a whole bunch of us out here looking to spend our money but not able to because the banks and finance companies want to hoard their cash and not loan it out. Hence putting pressure on the car manufactures who are begging governments around the world for tax-payers money...

What can be done to get the bankers to stop being afraid like George Bush at an Iraqi shoe factory?

Dad's 1st Visit

2009-03-06T03:39:00.000Z

It is said that most Americans do not have a passport and an even greater amount never leave America's borders. With recent legislation in America making the old past-time of traveling to Canada, Mexico and certain Caribbean Island nations with a driving license or birth certificate now extinct more passports are being issued than ever before to American citizens. Yet it is unknown how many actually utilize them to travel outside of North America.

Whether most Americans not leaving their continent is an admirable or detestable situation is indeed debatable on many levels. It is understandable to believe that North America has so many different cultural treasures and great vacation spots that a person could spend a week vacation every year for 20 years easily exploring the continent and not going to the same place twice.

At the same time there are so many other cultures and environments on 6 other continents that have so much to offer and explore that it seems a shame to limit oneself to one continent.

In late February 2006 my father made his first trip outside of North America to come and visit my family and I in Birmingham for about 9 days. My dad is a typical American man in his 50's with a slight resemblance to Liverpool Football Club manager Rafa Benítez and getting him to actually apply for a passport was a huge step. At this point I had actually been living in Europe for almost 7 years and it amazes me that it took this long for my dad to get a passport and get on a plane. In fact, that more of my family has not taken advantage of me living in Europe to come and visit me leaves me incredulous. If I was in their shoes I would have been over at every opportunity. But I digress.

My Dad flew on KLM from Boston to Amsterdam and then after a small layover a short leg of Amsterdam to Birmingham. He didn't much take to Birmingham in those first few days. He wasn't too thrilled with the food nor the trash that people around here seem to religiously throw wherever they please in Birmingham. The only food he actually liked while he was here was Nando's.

I had booked us a flight from London Luton airport to to Grenoble airport in the French Alps on Easyjet while he was here in Europe so that we could go visit my son in France. The flight wasn't until late morning but we were catching a coach from Birmingham to London Luton at 6.45AM leaving us plenty of time to get stuck in traffic on the M1. As I only lived about maximum 10 minutes from the coach station we went outside to the car at around 6.15-6.20ish to have my wife drive us to the station.

Unfortunately the car decided that it didn't want to start. It was actually a very cold night out but I never had the problem with the car prior to that. We tried push-starting the car for about 5 minutes before we gave up and I called a friend to drive us to the station but of course we had missed our coach by then.

The next best option was a 7.30AM bus heading to central London. Luton airport is not actually in London. I would estimate it to be around 40 minutes drive north on the M1 from central London with decent traffic. I was actually hoping that the coach driver would drop us near the airport but I didn't have the nerve to ask.

By the time we got to London it was around 10.30AM and now we had to find a way to back track through the city and up the M1. It wasn't looking good. If we missed this flight my dad wouldn't have another chance to fly to France to see my son. I asked a black cab how much it would cost me to get to Luton and he quoted me "around £120". I found a private taxi and he told me he could get me there in time for £75 and we were off. He drove like a mad man through the city in his Ford Galaxy minivan and even stopped on the way for some gas before dropping us off at the airport with literally only a few minutes to spare.

We checked in and hurried to the gate to board the aircraft. After landing at St George airport we passed through immigration and boarded a bus for centre of Grenoble. I had booked a hotel nearby to where my son was staying and we had an excellent time having fun with my oldest son.

My dad loved France. He found the atmosphere and the environment of Grenoble to be extraordinary not to mention the great food. I think while he obviously wanted to spend time with his granddaughter in Birmingham he really hated to fly back to the UK.

The morning of his flight to Amsterdam continental Europe was having some terrible weather. His flight to Amsterdam was delayed a day and then when he did make it out to Amsterdam the next morning he got stuck there for another day before getting flown to Newark airport and then on to Boston.

I guess he didn't have that bad of time here in Birmingham though because he did end up returning about 2 years later. He still insisted on flying to France though.

BBC2 wants me to grow my own drugs!

2009-03-03T16:22:00.005Z

Last night I caught a show on BBC2 starring an ethnobotanist named James Wong entitled "Grow Your Own Drugs".

I found it very fascinating as I believe that in many (and perhaps most) cases nature possesses the remedy to that which ails us more so than the pharmaceutical companies would like us to know. If we know that a certain plant that we can grow ourselves will act to sooth eczema for example then why would we purchase their creams and pills?

Anyway I was particularly interested in a method Wong showed to help insomniacs like myself as I have built up a resistance to OTC sleeping medication. What would he suggest that I could grow myself or extract from a common natural source to aid me in falling asleep?

Well, quite simple really. Hops. Yes the same hops used in beer.

Apparently on the hop plant their is a yellow dust that aides in inducing sleep.

As not to have your bedroom smelling like hops Wong suggested adding a few handfuls of dried lavender to a breathable mesh bag that you lay on your pillow when you desire to go to sleep.

I am trying to source the ingredients over the net as I write this and will write how it pans out for me in the near future.

Here is his recipe from the BBC2 website:

HOPS PILLOW FOR INSOMNIA

For a pillow about 32 x 23 cm:
4 handfuls dried hops flowers
4 handfuls dried lavender flowers
1. To dry the hops and lavender yourself, tie them in bunches and hang upside down in a well-ventilated space out of direct sunlight for 2 weeks. Alternatively, place in a low oven (about 100C) for 30 minutes or so until dry and crispy. Strip the flowers off the larger or harder stalks.
2. Put equal handfuls of dried hops and lavender flowers into a cotton pillowcase, and seal the end.

USE: Place the pillow under or beside your head to induce sleep.

UPDATE HERE!!

Can't get over Land Rover!

2009-03-01T16:44:00.008Z

I have a good friend here in Birmingham who works as an engineer for Jaguar/Land Rover and he says that it is very likely that he will be one of the 3000 people working for them to get the axe here in the UK. When he told me this a week or so ago I was absolutely dumbfounded.

Admittedly Jaguars and Land Rovers are not 'popular' cars in a world gone 'eco' nuts but they are British cars (Or at least they used to be.) and support the economy of this country. As someone who does not believe that human beings are to blame for the so called 'global warming' (Or is it climate change now, Al Bore?) not to mention needing a 7-seater vehicle I am in the market for a Land Rover Discovery 3.

I have looked at other vehicles such as the Mercedes R320, the Volkswagen Touran and the Citroen C4 Grand Picasso but would have loved to get the Discovery 3.

So, I looked online and found 3 Land Rover dealers in my area and took a ride to the closest one to take a test-drive and get some literature on the truck. Upon arriving to the dealership I walked inside and started to look around at all the different vehicles available including the 2 different versions of the Discovery 3. After a few minutes I was asked by some woman if I had been helped yet to which I informed her that I had not been.

She told me that she would get someone right out to help me as I looked at the interior of one of the Discovery models.

A minute or so later a man walks out and asks me some general questions as to what I am looking for. He then asked me a few questions that I have never been asked before at a dealership in the UK or any other country for that matter.

"Are you a resident of the country?"

"Do you have a full UK driving licence?"

"What kind of car are you driving now?"

It seemed to me that he was trying to get rid of me so that he could go back and sit in his office before going home in 50 minutes when the clock struck 6PM. Once he realized that I was not here to waste his time he sat me down and took some information from me to get a price for the truck.

After leaving me outside on the sales floor for about 20 minutes he comes out and shows me what he can offer me the truck for. I told him that was all very well but when was I going to be able to take the truck for a spin?

He looks at his watch. It is now approaching 5.35PM. He says to me well we don't actually have a manual for you to test-drive. There are only a few automatics. To his frustration I told him that that was not a problem.

He went to get the dealer plates and make a photocopy of my licence and then took me to the back of the dealership where the trucks were parked.

"Oops. I grabbed the wrong keys." By the time he comes back it is slightly past 5.40PM and we get into the truck. I pull out and test-drive the very comfortable and sturdy Discovery 3 for only about 10 minutes as the dealership is beginning to shutdown.

I park the truck back in its place and we sat there having some small chat about how I liked it.

He then gives me his card and we part ways.

As I did not like the way the salesman had treated me I had no intention of returning to give him my business. But I had taken my literature, received a quote and test drove the vehicle.

The next day I called the other 2 Land Rover dealers in the area and spoke with some salesmen and told them what I was looking for. I was told by each dealership that they would look up some numbers and get back to me.

To this day both of them have not. I even called them both back a week later and told the receptionist that I had already called and given my information to a salesman but had not had a call back.

I tried to give my money to Land Rover and they didn't seem to want it. And that is a shame because my friend and many others may lose their jobs because this company doesn't have enough cash-flow. I am not silly enough to think that I would save a few jobs at Land Rover/Jaguar if I had bought a Discovery 3 but the troubling part is that if this has happened to me I am sure it has happened to others too.

Oh, well. I really don't mind a German car I guess...

Ryanair to Charge for Toilet Usage?

2009-02-27T12:32:00.005Z

Perhaps my bestest buddy Abu Thaar aka Craig can confirm in the comments section that I called this one about 6 years ago after a trip from Frankfurt Hahn to London Stansted on Ryanair.

Here is the link for the following article.

Irish budget airline Ryanair has said it is considering charging passengers for using the toilet while flying.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary told the BBC that the Dublin-based carrier was looking at maybe installing a "coin slot on the toilet door".

Consumer group Which? said the airline was putting "profit before passengers".

Last week Ryanair confirmed it planned to close all of its airport check-in desks by the end of the year in a bid to reduce the cost of its flights.

'Fast buck'

Ryanair aims to offer low basic ticket prices, and then charge extra for items such as checking in at the airport or for additional luggage.

"One thing we have looked at in the past, and are looking at again, is the possibility of maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door, so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in future," he told the BBC.

He added: "I don't think there is anybody in history that has got on board a Ryanair aircraft with less than a pound."

But Rochelle Turner, head of research at Which? Holiday, said: "It seems Ryanair is prepared to plumb any depth to make a fast buck and, once again, is putting profit before the comfort of its customers.

"Charging people to go to the toilet might result in fewer people buying overpriced drinks on board, though - that would serve Ryanair right."

I agree with the last paragraph in the article. I think overall this will hurt Ryanair's profits as it charges £3 or about $4.50 for a very average cup of coffee that I think a many a people will fore go so that they do not have to risk another £1 fee to use the toilet. And I believe that they charge an even higher price for alcohol.

BUT, and yes it is a big but, the CEO of Ryanair, a gentleman by the name of Michael O'Leary is renowned for crazy PR 'stunts' and press conferences. Check this Times of London article with the 40 best Ryanair headlines over the past decade.

I have never personally had a bad experience with Ryanair in the 15 or so times I have flown with them in the past 6 years. In fact I have had 2 very good experiences, one with a check-in person when my luggage was overweight and the other after I was late to the airport for my flight to Jerez, Spain and was rebooked on a flight to nearby Seville, Spain for a minimal cost.

But I have seen on a flight where a man was having some sort of problems breathing and the flight crew told him he could use a bottle of oxygen but that they would have to charge him £10.

Yes, you heard that right. Ryaiair charge to use oxygen... And you expect toilets to remain gratis???

Celta in Solihull...

2009-02-26T21:12:00.005Z

Today I had an interview at Solihull College to hopefully convince them that I possess the right material to partake in an intense course run by the very prestigious Cambridge University.

The CELTA course stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching Adults and is the best credential a teacher can have other than a degree in a specific subject.

I had sent in my application packet consisting of an essay on why I wanted to take the course, a 5 problem sheet with grammar and spelling mistakes and a lesson plan to teach the mistakes about a month ago. I was contacted about 2 weeks ago by admissions to arrange an interview and when I arrived today I was given another worksheet with 5 problems to correct.

This time I had to explain to the interviewer what my corrections were and why I deemed it necessary as well as briefly indicate how I would do teach it in a classroom setting. I was given 30 minutes to complete that and then the interviewer came and sat with me in the room and asked me some questions such as why I desired to take the course and what I hoped to achieve by taking it.

We then went over the work I had done and she explained to me certain aspects of the course such as the amount of individuals that would be with me as well as the type of students we would be teaching during the classroom modules.

The interviewer's knowledge of the English language was quite extraordinary and we discussed the variations of British English and American English quite extensively. I was told that if I was accepted that I should teach American English in my classes and not try to teach British English as it would not come across right. This seems logical enough. Why try to fake knowing British grammar and what not?

But then I was thinking what kind of effect will that have on the student I would be teaching? I mean, they are real students paying to be taught English as a second language in Britain. Some are spouses coming form different countries looking to learn English for a test they need to obtain permanent residency and others are students form other European countries looking to improve their English. Me teaching American English to students in Britain seems problematic to their development but the interviewer didn't see to think so.

And the interviewer definitely has more experience and knowledge in the field than I do...

And then I was told that I would be offered the 12Th and final place in the program. So I accepted and ran across to the main reception with my acceptance slip to register before minds could be changed...

Me & Prince Sultan

2009-02-25T20:39:00.010Z

On this day 8 years ago I was deployed to Prince Sultan Airbase (also known as P-SAB) in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the United States Air Force. I had just turned 20 a few months prior and I had been in the Air Force for a few months over 2 years at this point.

This being my first time in Saudi Arabia I, much like most people first visiting, never know what to expect. I thought to myself things like, 'It's winter but it's Saudi! How cold can it really be?' And, 'What facilities will they have on base?' Fortunately I was the 2ND leg of the 6 month window our squadron was due to deploy and had some information from colleagues about certain things going on.

Upon landing at P-SAB we disembarked off the military jumbo jet and then had to find our luggage that had been taken off the plane and placed on the concrete for us to sort through. After finding my bags I found my way to a line consisting of the other people that were on the flight with me. At the head of this line was a man is traditional Arab dress checking through the luggage of all the people who had just arrived. It was his job to confiscate any contraband that was deemed prohibited under the agreement that had been signed between the two governments. I remember that a few VHS tapes were confiscated off of one individual to be reviewed and then returned to him once they had checked out. A few people had a particular CD by the rap duo,Outkast confiscated. Not because of the musical content on the CD but the artwork of a naked woman on the CD itself.

Once everyone had been past the customs guy we were in-processed and put on some school buses painted tan and driven to the location where we would be sleeping for the next 3 months. The accommodations were excellent. I was assigned to a room with another guy from my shop and in the room there was 2 bunk beds, 4 large closets and a small refrigerator. The room was within a larger building that had perhaps 14 other rooms just like mine and a large communal living room with American cable television and a full kitchen setup on one wall. There was a 2 communal bathrooms with maybe 4 private stalls and 4 private showers as well as a laundry room with a handful of washers and dryers.

The overall living conditions were excellent but that as because it was not easy to live in the desert for 3 to 6 months and they had to do everything they could from to prevent people from going insane. There was an outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and a very well equipped gym.

The chow hall food was not the best that I had ever tasted but they did try. There were some trailers that held a Burger King, a Baskin Robbins, a pizza place and a Chinese restaurant as well.

Financially P-SAB was a great place to be. First off all there was not too much one could spend their money on. Secondly, being is a 'hostile' area we were entitled to tax-free income as well as certain hazard pay bonuses. One could easily walk away from a 3 month stint in the desert with $5 grand in his pocket if he was so inclined.

The work was very manotonous for us in Saudi as typically jets would take off and come back with generally a minimal amount of problems. In fact we spent most our time sitting in a trailer playing PlayStation, playing basketball in combat boots when the weather was not too bad or sitting in the back of a 'bread truck' waiting for work to develop.

Overall the weather was perfect for the 3 months I was there. I think we saw rain drops once or twice but they never amounted to anything more than a spectacle and the Saudi in March and April is actually quite lovely. There were a few sandstorms while we were there and one in particular was so severe that when I fully extended my arm out in front of me I could not see my finger tips.

In fact that sandstorm cost me a small chunk of money. While I was deployed I was taking an English course towards my degree and had all my assignments on a 3.5" floppy disk that I had to print out and send in the mail to my instructor. During that terrible sandstorm sand got into everything and everywhere that a grain of sand has the ability to fit into including my backpack that contained my floppy disk. Grains of sand managed to get into the disk and scratch the film inside making it so a computer could not read the files on the disk. And I failed the class.

Days tend to blend together in situation like these. Only remarkable events separate ordinary 'Groundhog' like days. Days where there is a mind blowing sandstorm. Or the day a French Mirage crashed not to far from the base on a training mission killing the pilot. The day that Chief Master Sergeant Thompson yelled at me for moving a porta potty with a forklift like machine because I needlessly drove to close to a jet.

And the day I was able to get an R&R trip to the capital city of Riyaadh a couple weeks before we went back home to Germany. P-SAB was about 2 hours south of Riyaadh and only a handful of people go to go every week. I was selected by my first Sergeant to go and really looked forward to it after being stuck on the base for the past 2 and a half months. I remember driving in a big Chevrolet Suburban with 3 other men, one woman and our two military chaperons. We were told to wear dress pants, a button up shirt and dress shoes while the woman had to dress in a traditional Muslim woman's dress. She didn't have to wear the face veil but chose to to get the full experience of the culture we were about to experience.

In Riyaadh we had the option to go for lunch at a traditional Arab restaurant or Fuddruckers, a classic American burger restaurant. I was outnumbered 3 to 2 and we ended up at Fuddruckers having burgers and fried chicken which was not so bad after 2 and a half months of P-SAB chow hall but... You know.

We were taken to a traditional Arab market in Riyaadh and went shopping for gold and mink blankets. I had a beautiful experience in the market when the Arabic call to prayer came over the loudspeakers. The man chanting in Arabic was very beautiful in itself but the speakers around me seemed to be a split second apart and it was kind of like 'surround sound' echo all around the area.

We flew out of P-SAB in early April and when we landed in Germany everything was a new green. Germany is an incredibly green place to begin with but after being in the desert for a few months even the military camouflaged uniforms looked greener.

After returning we were entitled to 2 weeks vacation to unwind and get back into the swing of things.

British Things That Make You Go Hmmm #2

2009-02-24T18:05:00.005Z

I am still having problems with my internet stick but have a dial-up like capability until I can get into the city centre to visit the T-mobile shop and get my stick fixed.

Today I went to a local take-away to get some fresh bread for my lunch of canned soup and was given the bread wrapped in tin foil and placed in a plastic shopping bag also known here in the UK as a carrier bag. I now there is nothing special in what I have just wrote. The thing that made me go hmmm is displayed here in this photo.

The logo on that bag is very familiar to me yet it is probably not known by 98% of the people living in this country. This is a shopping bag from a Belgian supermarket named Delhaize that I used to shop at while I lived in Luxembourg. So how did the plastic shopping bags from a Belgian supermarket chain end up in my local take-away????!!!

First off I should mention that they had a whole bunch of them. The local take-away has obviously bought them in bulk from some supplier. I have likewise seen shopping bags from French supermarket chains such as Cora and Auchan in the past year or so in Birmingham.

It makes me wonder why? Either a supplier is stuck with a whole lot of extra bags that were produced for these shops yet were not bought or the stores themselves purchased too many and are trying to offload them here in the UK (and probably other places).

This particularly makes sense when you know that Auchan and Delhaize charge 2 to 3 Euro cent for the bags in their shops while they remain free from major supermarkets here in the UK. Is it that far fetched to think that most people are no longer buying the bags in these European supermarkets and they decided they can still make money off them by selling them in bulk here in the UK?

Sorry...Out of Order.

2009-02-17T15:02:00.004Z

My wireless broadband internet stick has decided it doesn't like the new Mac security update and decided to wipe itself clean.

T-Mobile has called me twice since I first called them on Saturday morning but I missed the calls both times.

That's the way the cookie crumbles I guess...

Signing off from an internet cafe!

British Things That Make You Go Hmmm #1

2009-02-13T21:41:00.007Z

In the UK they call a car's liscence plate a 'number plate' and they are a big business.

Normal number plates are issued to a new car when it is registered by the car dealer with the DVLA and they tend to stay with the car for its entire 'life'.

The front plate here in the UK is white and the rear one is bright yellow but that varies from country to country around Europe. The thing that is totally unique about UK plates is that the two numbers you see in the photo above indicate the year that the car is manufactured. So the 51 you see in the example above tells you that the car was made between September 1st, 2001 to February 29th 2002 and the plates issued by the DVLA from March 1st 2002 would have had an 02.

The impact of this on an economic level is that people desire to have the latest number plate and tend to upgrade their car just for that reason. As for used cars then you could have the same car with the same mileage and even made in the same year yet one has an 07 plate and the other a 57 plate and the 57 plated car would be worth more on the market.

There is also custom plates that you can pay for from the DVLA and they remain the property of the individual. Desire your initials? How about a nickname? Well there are two ways to get it. First you can hope that no one has ordered it already from the DVLA and pay about £250 for it OR if you are not so fortunate you will have to try to buy it off of the individual who already owns it.

In the case of the above plate, which belongs to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo's Bentley you would probably have to pay him millions of dollars or pounds to get him to sell that to you. You up for it?

Rockin Like a Moroccan Part II

2009-02-12T01:09:00.020Z

In my previous post I left off with DBH having a seizure in the bathroom of my friend Karim's house the evening before we are supposed to board the train for a cross-country trip in Morocco. I was able to squeeze part of my upper body through the slight opening we had created by pushing the door and his body forward and see that he was not in the best of condition.

I was able to see that DBH was still having his seizure but not as severe as when he first fell out. He was completely dressed and it was obvious he was about to leave the toilet area when he was overcome. He had somehow fallen so that his back was against the door and his legs were straight out in front of him facing towards the toilet. His eyes were still rolled back in his head and his jaw was clenched incredibly tight while the air coming from his nose was incredibly exaggerated.

I was trying to comfort him by telling him to relax and that everything would be all right and after maybe 3 minutes the seizure appeared to end. Using the left arm I had managed to initially squeeze through I forced him to slouch forward taking his body weight off the door. After that Karim and I were able to push the door forward enough so that we could get inside the bathroom and lift him up.

We carried him about 20 feet (6 meters) to a sofa in Karim's living room and left him to rest. Karim and I looked at each other in disbelief at what had just transpired in his apartment. He then asked me why DBH or myself had not informed him of DBH's condition to which I informed him that I knew nothing about it.

Karim explained to me that if DBH had needed medical attention or had died in his house just how severe the consequences would have been to him and his family. He said that the police would have basically arrested everyone and figured out the story at the station. He said that DBH and myself would have been okay as we had traveled together to Morocco but him being a resident and his wife a citizen they would have had it much worse.

About an hour or two later DBH came through from his sleep and looked around the room then at me. I asked him if he knew what day it was to which he answered incorrectly. I then asked him if he knew where he was. He looked around the room again and then back at me while revealing that he thought we were in England.

I informed him that we were in Morocco at Karim's house. He laid back down and went returned to sleeping.

He woke up again a few hours later and seemed to be a little clearer on where he was but was not too sure as to what had happened to him. He said that he had not had an episode like this one for well over 5 years and had no idea what had brought it on. He said he was very tired and did not think he would be able to travel the next day so Karim insisted that we stay until DBH felt well enough to leave.

By the next day DBH was just as active as he was before his seizure. We caught a taxi to the train station and each purchased a first class one-way ticket to Oujda with a delay in Rabat to visit friends and drop off some belongings. The train was modern and similar to ones I have traveled on in Europe. The cars had a corridor the length of the car with perhaps 6 separate cabins. Second class cabins consisted of a hard bench on each end of the cabin with a normal train window. First class cabins had 6 cushioned seats in a cabin and operated off of an assigned seating number printed on your ticket. We had each paid 450 Moroccan dirhams (about $45USD) for our seat in first class for an almost 16 hour ride from one end of Morocco to the opposite end.

The ride from Marrakesh to Rabat was about 3 hours and we sat by the windows watching the scenery go past. After a while we could tell we were entering into an urban area and all of a sudden the man came on the intercom calling out in French that we were about to stop at Rabat Agdal station. DBH and I quickly grabbed our belongings and exited the train onto the platform and hot humid air. As the train was departing we walked towards the station and then out to the parking area in front of the main entrance. I immediately knew that we had gotten off at the wrong station as the area was to suburban looking. We grabbed a taxi outside the station and told him to take us to the address we provided.

The taxi driver explained to me that he would only be able to take me to the edge of Rabat where I would have to catch another taxi, as petit (small) taxis can only operate within their district. So after switching taxis I gave the new taxi driver the address to the villa and after some confusion we arrived and were welcomed inside. We sat with them for a few hours had some mint tea and dropped off the diapers that were the majority of my luggage. We caught a taxi to the main train station Rabat and awaited the 11PM train to Oujda.

As it was late at night some men were cleaning the platform with hoses and other materials when it started to rain. The 20 or so of us on the platform all headed to the same overhang trying to keep ourselves and luggage dry and the train pulled in not too long after the rain had started. We found our assigned car and cabin and put our luggage on the racks above the seats and tried to get comfortable before the train pulled off.

We got some sleep on the trip but were typically awakened at every stop as people were embarking and disembarking the train. At the city of Fes we seemed to have stopped for longer than scheduled and had a man and woman enter our cabin for the remainder of the trip.

We arrived at our destination around 9AM and were greeted by a friend who lived in the same community with me in Germany for a time. Abdur Rahman is American and married to a Moroccan woman who is originally from the city we were visiting on the Algerian border.

We stayed with Abdur Rahman and his family for about 5 days. It was cool to have a window into the frustrations and happiness of his daily life. We typically ended up going to the market every day for groceries and other needs but stopped off for lunch and coffee occasionally. Oujda being so far from the main cities of Morocco and not having any tourist attractions of any sort people tend to wonder what westerners are doing all the way out there. Hence I felt like a curiosity to the people.

We did manage to walk out towards the Algerian border one afternoon. It was about a 20 minute walk and I would have loved to cross the border but unlike Morocco, Algeria requires visas to be arranged prior to traveling. Moroccan can cross the border with no problems but Algerians are not allowed to cross into Morocco without a visa or some official paperwork.

The day before our flight back to London we caught the long train ride back to Marrakesh with a change in Casablanca. Once in Marrakesh we caught a taxi back to Karim's house and spent the night. Our flight was around 7AM and that meant we would have to leave Karim's house around 5AM for an uneventful flight back to London.

Rockin Like a Moroccan Part I

2009-02-11T02:20:00.006Z

In May of 2006 a British friend of mine and I somehow came to the decision that we were going to go to Morocco for around 10 days at the earliest and cheapest opportunity. I wanted to visit because I had two good friends living there and my traveling companion, DBH wanted to go because he was on the search for a wife and Morocco is known for having ample single women looking for husbands.

DBH was all of 18 years old and actually looked more like 16 at the time. He is of mixed race (as they call it here in the UK) and originally from the south of England but had moved to Birmingham not to long after I had. DBH had received his full UK driving licence just recently and purchased a used Nissan Micra that he drove us to his hometown in, the afternoon prior to the day of our flight. We took the M40 south towards London where we eventually changed to another motorway that brought us to his mom's house. We visited his mother and brother for a short time before heading over to another area named Slough that is not to far west of London where DBH had arranged a place for us to stay the night.

The next day a mutual friend drove us to London Gatwick airport (one of London's 5 airports) which was where we had booked our departing flight that would take us to Marrakesh, Morocco. Atlas Blue airline is one of the many low-cost airlines operating out of London and their website had quoted me a roundtrip price of about £85 each. We were dropped off curbside and proceeded to check in our luggage inside the terminal. The line through security was pretty long but moved fairly quickly and before we knew it we were sitting at the gate waiting to board the plane. Unfortunately the flight ended up being delayed for about an hour and we didn't have much to do except look around for the person with the most outrageously over-weight and/or over-sized piece of carry-on luggage.

I do not remember much about the actual flight itself although it would have taken about three and a half hours to fly over the English Channel, France, Spain and most of Morocco. Upon arrival we were met by a bus at the foot of the aircraft stairs that brought us to immigration where our passports were stamped. I had arranged a place to stay for the night in Marrakesh for DBH and I with a friend who is married to a woman from Marrakesh. Unfortunately I did not know that I would be asked for his address and it held us up for a little bit longer than normal at immigration.

Once cleared to enter the country as tourists we went to the luggage belt and awaited our bags. After a short time they showed up and now we had to stand in a line for custom's inspection. Our turn came and we had to load our bags onto a conveyor belt that led into an X-ray machine. DBH's bags where deemed to be ok but I was asked to open my bag up because of odd shapes on the official's screen.

I had been asked by my ex-wife to bring some diapers from the UK to Morocco for my son as apparently they are much more expensive there. Her family is originally Moroccan although her and most of her siblings were born in France. Her parents had had the fortune and foresight to build a house close to the capital city (named Rabat) as a vacation home.

Upon complying with the customs officer's request to open my bag up for his viewing pleasure he saw 4 large packs (84 diapers in a pack I believe.) of diapers and asked why I was bring diapers when I had to child with us. In his mind I was bringing these diapers into Morocco to sell and make a profit. I explained to him the situation and he reluctantly allowed me to pass without paying any duty tax.

Once on the other side of customs my friend, Karim, who has lived in the UK for most of his life was there to greet us. We caught a taxi back to his place and sat in his in living room catching up on things for the majority of the night. The next day we went to visit Marrakesh's main tourist attraction known as Jamaa' al Fna, a market and square that I imagine has had the same vibe today as it did 500 years ago. In fact this main square has a history going back over a thousand years!

The market behind the main square was a maze of alleyways with hundreds of shops selling everything from clothing and refreshments to cheap Chinese made toys and authentic hand carved Moroccan household items.

But after the sun set the main square became a regular old 5-ring circus! I am talking about monkeys, belly dancers, fortunetellers, and much more. It was a feast for the eyes! You almost wouldn't believe that the same square you saw during the day was the same one you witnessed at night.

At the center of this circus were perhaps 50 open-air restaurants that were setup directly after sunset in the center of the main square. Each restaurant was like a stall with benches around the grills and men yelling things out in probably 5 different languages trying to convince you to eat at their particular stall.

We did and the food was amazing.

Upon returning back to Karim's house we began to prepare for our planned train ride to Oujda (On the Moroccan/Algerian border) with a few hours stop at my former mother-in-law's house near the capital. After packing our bags I decided to jump in the 'shower', which consisted of a closet with a drain on the floor and a tap with a showerhead attached to it, when all of a sudden I heard a continuous loud banging sound.

I had never experienced even a small earthquake at this point in my life but this sound was so loud that this is exactly what I thought it was, so I froze. The extremely loud banging sound continued in what seemed like a steady evenly timed manner. I changed my mind and thought to myself, "Someone must be dragging something extremely heavy down the stairs of the building. Perhaps a grand piano."

Finally the sound stopped and I was about to complete removing the soap from my body when Karim knocks on the door and calls my name loudly. I answer him "Yes" in an inquisitive manner and he then asks if I am okay. I am slightly baffled at his question and tell that I am fine.

Not a few seconds later he is banging on my door again yelling frantically that something is wrong with DBH and he needs me to come out and help him. I am standing naked in this closet with a 'shower' in it with my friend on the other side of the door telling me to hurry and help him. Not knowing what is going on I continue to dry myself off with my towel not wanting to put my clothes on while I still have a wet body. He frantically bangs on the door again yelling my name and telling me to hurry and come help him.

I break and just throw the towel around my waste and come out of the shower. Karim tells me that DBH is in the toilet, which is directly next to the shower closet but that he is not answering. And then the cause of the banging noise clicks inside of my head.

While trying to hold the towel around my waist I push on the bottom of the door that opens into the toilet room but it is no use. It does not budge. After both Karim and I put a lot of equal pressure on the lower part of the door and the middle part we manage to create a gap of about 4 or 5 inches and I manage to squeeze my still wet head, shoulder and left arm into the bathroom and see DBH sitting with his back against the door having a seizure.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Just how Bad are Dentists in Britain?

2009-02-10T00:01:00.003Z

I was checking out the BBC's website earlier today and came across this article with the following headline.

"Girl starved to death after op"

So in my head I say "Wow, that is odd. What kind of medical procedure could she have had performed on her that would lead to her starving to death?" You would in my opinion be likely to ask yourself the same question upon reading it as I.

So I look to the first paragraph under the headline and it reads the following.

"An eight-year-old girl starved to death at home because she refused to open her mouth after a dental operation, an inquest heard."

Huh?? A dental operation?? Really?!

Now if you are to read the entire article you will read that she had such a fear of dentists that it was decided for her that she would be put under general anesthesia (i.e., put to sleep temporarily) so that they could remove 8 baby teeth or as they are called here in the UK her 'milk teeth'.

So, just how bad do dentists in this country have to be for someone to get to this level of fear of them? Granted, it could have been all in the little girl's head. My brother bit the hand of a dentist when he was about 5 like some rabid dog when the dentist was trying to inject him with novacaine. But I really don't think this is the case

Why, you ask? Well, because Britain has quite the reputation for extremely poor dental hygiene. To the point that it has become a long running joke amongst Americans.

From Austin Powers to that famous episode of the Simpsons where Lisa goes to the orthodontist to get braces and is shown the 'The Big Book of British Smiles' to instill fear. And I am here to confirm that this is a joke that has ample proof to show that it based on reality. I have seen too many British people, normal good-looking people who open their mouth to speak and make you feel nervous that you are focusing your gaze solely on their crooked and stained fangs.

It really makes you wonder why so many people here do not utilize the dentistry service that is available in this country. Particularly since a large part of it is free on what is part of their social National Health Service, also known as the NHS.

Well perhaps that is the problem. The NHS covers almost all aspects that fall under health. From the optician to the doctor and the dentist. There is one large difference though between these 3 aspects of health I just mentioned. While the doctors remain a fully socialized and free service for all legal residents a decision was made about 20 years ago to privatize other aspects of the NHS such as opticians and yes, you guessed it! Dentists. They now had the option to remain under the NHS umbrella or remove it from themselves and be a fully private business.

It didn't take dentist long to figure out that by removing the 'shackles' of the NHS they could charge whatever they wanted to for a procedure. There was then a mass exodus from the system by dentists and it is now a broken system. This article from the BBC says that " over 300,000 people lost their dentist in three months" and that "900,000 fewer people are now seeing an NHS dentist than before government reforms, figures show."

Clearly government intervention has not worked to help the state of the poor British publics molars and incisors. Boy am I glad good teeth run in my family....

My First Trip to the UK

2009-02-09T03:12:00.003Z

It was this month 9 years ago when I first set foot in the UK. I was amongst a small group who were issued orders for a temporary deployment to RAF Lakenheath, the largest American military base in the UK.

This was to be my 3rd deployment in less than a year since arriving in Germany and one that everyone looked forward to going on. The purpose of the deployment was to give air to air combat experience to both bases pilots although F-16s vs. F-15s is not much of a contest.

We left Spangdahlem in two coaches heading towards Calais, France to catch the ferry to Dover, England sometime in the morning. The ride was pretty uneventful other than the lack of comfort from being on a coach and getting stopped by the French Gendarmerie at the Belgian-French border. I do not remember if they stopped the bus I was on first or the other one but I remember them coming on board and wanting to see everyone's military I.D. and a copy of the deployment orders. I would say that we were held up for no more than half an hour before we were on our way to the port in Calais. It was all a little funny because none of the Americans spoke French nor did our German coach drivers and of course the Gendarmeries said they spoke no English. It seemed like the Gendarmeries didn't care after they realized no one spoke French and kind of gave up... Go figure.

I remember the bus driving onto the ferry and everyone going up to the cabin areas. It wasn't long before we took off for the port of Dover and everyone went in all directions exploring what the ship had to offer. The English Channel was especially choppy on this particular day. I remember leaning about 20 degrees to the side in order to walk without falling over. It was incredible. Unfortunately I and I assume everyone else had not had anything to eat since we set off from Germany about 5 or 6 hours earlier and we all set upon the small cafe on the ship before it set sail. Little did we know that upon hitting the extremely choppy waters we would all be losing our lunch.

When I felt the urge to vomit I headed to the bathroom and all the stalls were occupied with people vomiting themselves. I and another individual who was waiting could hold out and ended up puking in the sink... Good times.

We did finally land on the other side of the channel all be it a little late because of the choppy waters and continued on our coach ride up to Suffolk County. The base is about an hour and half to 2 hours drive north of London and it really did suck after being sick and having been stuck on the coach for the trip from Germany to Calais.

It was late afternoon or early evening when we arrived at the nearby base of RAF Mildenahall where the hotel (on base) was located where we would be sleeping. I was pleased to have my own room as we were told that we might have to bunk up 2 people to a room because of lack rooms. The rooms were very ordinary but had a very different smell to them. Not a bad smell, just different and I have since smelled it again at a couple hotels in other parts of the UK.

We were given a section of the flightline with 3 hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) to house our 6 jets and some other equipment that we had brought with us. My crew was given the responsibility of working the 'End of Runway' (EOR) which entailed performing a final inspection of the jet before it became airborne and then safing the aircraft up to go back to the flightline.
It was a cool job to have because you were out on your own and had more free time to do what you wanted when the jets were in flight.

I remember running back and forth from one end of the runway to the other as jets take-off and land on separate ends of the runway. Normally you have a crew on each end but as we limited in manpower we had to cover both ends and would end up speeding down the parallel runways in order to complete the tasks in a timely manner.

As we were there for 2 working weeks we has the weekend in between free to do what we pleased. A large amount of us were going to London but we all found our own separate ways to get there. The way my 2 crew members and I took was the cheapest by far though. I figured out by reading the base newspaper that they had a free bus service from the base to London Heathrow Airport on the western outskirts of London. From there we caught the Tube to central London to begin our fun filled weekend.

Only the supervising member of my crew was able to afford a hotel in central London so we ended up giving him £10 each to sleep on the floor of his extremely small room. I ended up with one of the livelier members of my work section looking for an even more lively place to dance the night away. We never found the London House music scene we desired but he did manage to find some ecstasy that he paid £10 for and preceded to drop. London proved to be a tad bit too expensive for me and I really just walked around for most of the night laughing at drunken people stumble over curbs and other objects that Brits are so famously known for.

We returned back to the base on Sunday afternoon via the same way we arrived to get ready for work the next day, We were quite shocked to hear that a guy from another work section got jumped in a large town nearby to the base name Newmarket while we were in London. Apparently he was waiting for a taxi back to Mildenhall and some guy came up to him and asked him some question and then proceeded to wallop on him with a few other friends. He was admitted to a local hospital and I don't remember seeing him until maybe a day or so before we were packing up to go back to Germany.

I do not recollect anything from the ride home other than the water in the channel being much more calmer than it was when on the way to the UK.

Overall I had a descent time in England. I tried some British 'food' and remember attempting to drink dark Guinness Ale but was not impressed with either of them. Never would I have thought I would one day return to the UK to live but that is what makes the whole journey fun I suppose.

Why is sledding dangerous for Brits??

2009-02-08T13:48:00.008Z

I wrote a few days ago about how most of the UK has been receiving the most snow in 20 years and the complications and ramifications have been down right funny and sometimes completely weird.

From an idiot burglar in the northeast of England to Bobbies having snowball fights with passers-by on the beat to an unusual amount of people getting injured while sledding. One even dying.

By no means do I intend to insinuate that these things do not or could not happen in other countries but it seems to be BIG news here in the UK. From my experience Americans are the most atentive to the weather forecast but Brits are not that far behind them. The major difference is that Brits tend to expect their weather to be terrible as it usually is.

But the past week's weather has taken some people by surprise because of the way the collective British society sort of threw in the towel. The Brits are a people that pride themselves on their stiff upper lip and being persistent through adverse conditions but there has been satirical news that the Nazis were going to create a snow machine to defeat the Brits that summed up the occasion perfectly.

I do not ever recall in the past 3 winters that I have been here seeing any sleds for sale at any stores here in Birmingham. And I am sure that it is purely an economical decision not to sell them as there has never been anywhere near enough snow to actually go sledding. But perhaps not having traditional sleds available to purchase led to this girl's death. Her and her friends decided to use a makeshift sled out of a car's hood and crashed through a barbed wire fence going down the hill at an estimated speed of 40 MPH.

There have also been numerous articles in the news similar to this one where people sledding have had to go the hospital. Now I have been sledding probably since before I could walk. Seriously. It is something everyone does in the northeast, as we tend to get quite a bit of snow and there are plenty of hills. But in all that time growing up I do not recall once hearing of someone dying from sledding or being injured because of it.

Maybe Brits really do need all these Health and Safety regulations that they hate so much.

And on a serious note. Why do they call it "sledging"?

Lisbon, Me and my Mom...

2009-02-07T02:54:00.007Z

Around this time last year my family and I had the pleasure to host my mom on her trip to visit us in Birmingham, England. I believe it was her 3rd time flying across the pond and she absolutely loves being able to visit her grandchildren AND having the privilege of utilizing her son's knowledge of traveling throughout Europe.

The problem that I have when my mom (or anybody from America for that matter) comes to visit is that they always do it on short notice. This usually doesn't make it easy to find low cost flights around Europe as typically you need at least 2 weeks notice in order to find the cheapest seats on Ryanair or Easyjet and the like.

I wanted to surprise my mom with the trip somewhere and after much searching I managed to purchase 2 seats on BMI Baby from BHX to Lisbon for about £95 roundtrip (Yes, 2 seats for £95!)

The flight to Lisbon was not until the evening so I didn't tell her that we were going anywhere until the morning of the flight. And even then I didn't tell her WHERE we were going. I told her to pack 3 days worth of clothing and other items she would need and we made off for the 15-minute drive to the airport.

The surprise was made even cooler because I had managed to check-in online the night before and we had no check-in baggage to drop off at the desk. So when we arrived at Birmingham International Airport we immediately walked upstairs and proceeded through security.

Now we are waiting in terminal 1 lounge and she still has no idea where she is going. I finally see out flight details change on the monitor in the lounge and we start to proceed to the airplane.

She finally figured it out after they closed the door of the airplane and the stewardess announces the information regarding the flight. She was going to Lisbon, Portugal!

This meant a lot to her because ethnically she is Portuguese and it is someplace I think she had always wanted to visit. Secretly I think she thought she was going to Morocco though...

When we arrived at Lisbon airport we proceeded to immigration and found 2 very long lines to choose from. The problem was that neither option fit us. One was for European Union nationals and the other was for nationals whose are part of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries so we just stayed in the CPLC line for about an hour, got stamped and walked outside of the airport.

I had booked at the cheap chain hotel I always stay at when I travel around Europe. I like Ibis hotels because I know what I am getting no matter which country or city I am in. By the time the taxi arrived at the hotel it was close to 10 or 11PM and we took a short walk around the hotel to find some snacks and drinks and then called it a night. The hotel was a little further away from the city centre than I would have desired but on the plus side it gave us the opportunity to explore typical Lisbon residential areas that we never would have if we stayed closer to the city centre.

The next day we walked towards the city centre and got a feel for the layout of Lisbon. The best parts of the city were the Castle of São Jorge, The Al Fama quarter of the city, the San Francisco style cable cars running everywhere, and the food.

São Jorge's castle was definitely the highlight of the trip though. You get a really amazing view of the city from it as it is on the highest point of the city. It has a real feel to it and they have done an excellent job preserving it in its original form.

The Al Fama quarter is too much to explore in one day. It is the old Arab quarter of the city and has very narrow roads and alleys with old cobble stone brickwork. As well you have the San Francisco style trolleys running about the narrow roads and tight bends. One more than one occasion you sit and watch it just because you cannot believe the car will make around a near hairpin bend without hitting the wall.

Portugal is renowned for its seafood and it did not disappoint either of us. On the climb up to the castle we find a nice looking restaurant and as mom was a little tired we decided to stop and sit. I had what appeared to be some sort of omelette with pieces of fish, potato and some cheese. A little bit of hot sauce and I would have ordered more to take away!

Close to the President's palace there is a bakery that has been making Portugal's national dessert since 1837. This is the one place to get the original Pastel de Belém in the whole of the country. And it is true! I tried one from a cafe we sat at and it did not have the same texture nor taste to the ones I bought straight from the source.

Overall I was very surprised with Lisbon. I would say that behind Venice it is probably the coolest and most unique city in all of Europe. I hope to return again to explore the city further with my wife and kids in the near future...

5 Cool Things about Germany

2009-02-06T13:08:00.018Z

I was fortunate to live in Germany twice for a total of around 5 years. Once when I was actually in the Air Force and the other time as a contractor for the Department of Defense.

When I first arrived in Germany I absolutely loved it because of its novelty of it. It was completely different in almost every way that you could imagine to America. Then as I travelled to neighboring countries I kind of forgot about what Germany had to offer even though I lived there.

Upon returning to live in Germany after being away for about a year and a half I quickly remembered what I had been missing.

My list of 5 cool things about living in Germany...

1) The cars and the driving -- What came first? The touring car or the or the impeccable highway system? I don't know but either way the Germans have mastered both a long time ago. Okay dude, your Mustang is fast off the line but how do you feel when a BMW 520D (yes, diesel!) station wagon full of kids passes you on the Autobahn at 160 MPH around bends to boot? Where else do you pass police cars on the highway going over a 100MPH and not think twice about them.. Nor do they think twice of you?

The thing that is awesome to me about driving a German car in Germany is that people do not look at you so pretentiously like they do in other countries. Whether it is a BMW, Mercedes, Audi, VW or Porsche they are driven by everybody and anybody. These brands are seen in Germany the same way Chevrolet or Ford is seen in America. To me that is cool.

2) Turkish food-- Where to begin?! I guess the classic Döner kebab that tastes best in Germany (and I have tried it in Turkey...) Think of it as European fast food. Typically the place you order it from has a window on the front of the shop and you stand on the sidewalk and tell the guy what you want. About 60 to 90 seconds later he hands you your sandwich. Depending on where you are it will cost you anywhere from €3.50 to €5.00 for one. They have been in the news lately, as some 'news agencies' like to report the obvious as news.

3) Location, location, location -- Where I lived was 4 hours to Paris; 3 hours to Munich; 5 hours to Zurich; 3 hours to Brussels; and 6 hours to London... Enough said.

4) German mentality -- The Rule of law. Germans live by it and seem to love it. I have been yelled at by a German (who was actually obstructing traffic to yell at me) for riding a bike on the sidewalk and then an hour later for not having a headlight on the front of my bike and a flashing tail light on the back by another German. I once got pulled over on an access road between two highways by an unmarked German police car. He didn't stop me for driving 140 MPH in a 50MPH zone. No, that is understandable as it was a only a half-mile stretch of straightaway connecting two separate highways. He pulled me over for passing on a solid lined road...

There is no litter. People think nothing of keeping their trash in their pockets until they come across a trashcan. It seems to be a religion here in the UK to dump your trash wherever you please.

When you live in a place where people have little or no respect for the law it makes you appreciate a nation where the people comprehend the reasons and benefits for the whole of society in following them.

5) The American bases -- It is perhaps the most remarkable thing to me that I lived in a foreign country where you are surrounded by a new culture and language but have any 'touch of home' that you desire at your fingertips. I lived on base and off base in Germany and saw the positives and negatives of both but crossing back and forth between the two was truly something that made my stay in Germany much more enjoyable.

Want some Lucky Charms, Snapple Iced Tea and Hostess Donuts? Go on base and get it at the Shoppette or Commissary!

Want some Punica multi-vitamin juice, fresh Brotchen and Milka chocolate? Go off base and get it at Real or Toon!

First trip to Luxembourg

2009-02-05T17:25:00.011Z

I arrived in Germany to live in the spring of 1999 and quickly caught the traveling bug. Within a couple weeks of settling into my dorm room I was invited by my 'piss mate' (I had my own dorm room but shared the bathroom with the guy next door.) and a friend of his to go to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.

Luxembourg City is only about 45 minutes to an hour drive from Spangdahlem Airbase but is very different from Germany culturally. Although the ethnic Luxembourg people speak a dialect of German the actual language of the government is French. So for example all the road signs and restaurant menus are in French.

It would not have made any difference to me why 'piss mate' was going to Luxembourg as I would have gone even if he had told me he was going there to sell me to Gypsies. As it turned out I need not be worried of Gypsies. We were going to The Utopolis movie complex on the edge of the city.

We parked the car outside the complex in a dirt parking lot that is now home to two world famous banks and walked inside to purchase tickets for the next showing of The Matrix. We had about an hour or so before the movie started so we went upstairs and got some seats in a very chic looking bar with a very high ceiling and large glass windows overlooking the main street.

After sitting there and soaking in the European chic bar scene we went to get some popcorn and drinks before heading into the theatre. Two things that were initially very strange to me was that if you didn't ask for ice in your soda they wouldn't give you any and you had an option of two different kinds of popcorn. Salty or sweet.

Having tried Salty popcorn for my whole life of course I HAD to go for the sweet popcorn... And I loved it. It is crunchier than salted popcorn. Perhaps it has some toffee or honey mixed in with the sugar and butter. Very rarely would I ever get salted popcorn when visiting the Cinema after this.

With my hands loaded with sugary treats to stuff my face with for the next 90 minutes we went to find some seats in the theatre. The theatre screen looked bigger than what I was accustomed to in America and the seating was much steeper. The seats were more comfortable as well from what was available in most theatres in America in the late 90's.

So when the lights went dark and I was expecting the movie previews to begin I got a slight surprise... I was sitting through commercials for milk, beer and car insurance in French. Thankfully these ended and the previews began and the movie shortly there after.

The movie was the original in English but had German and French subtitles on the bottom. I actually became quite used to this and it helped me to learn some German and French words as well.

Once the movie was finished the lights came back on and the doors that are typically used for the emergency exits opened and we followed the crowd out. Upon walking down the stairs we found ourselves back in the main lobby where you purchased tickets. They seem to have the system setup so that you couldn't leave this film and go to see another one without paying... Good Idea I guess.

We got out of the cinema well past midnight and drove back to Spangdahlem but many more trips to Luxembourg would be in my future. The place had a different vibe to it. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time as to why it had a different atmosphere that Germany but it didn't take me too long to figure it out.

Calm between the 2 'storms'...

2009-02-04T17:38:00.008Z

Certain areas of the UK are having major issues. They are not really accustomed to that much snow in most parts of England so when they get the smallest amount of say 3" or 10cm they lose their marbles. It is a similar problem to what southern states in America have to deal with. Every once in a while they get hit with a snow storm and have no capabilities to remove the snow.

Here in Birmingham we received about 3" of snow but in some other areas of the southeast they got up to about 18". Imagine that with no plows or the proper rock salt to aid in dissolving the iced sidewalks. I saw on the news they said that they emergency services have received a 40% increase in 999 calls. Apparently many an old person is walking to the corner store to buy some milk and a newspaper and slipping in the sidewalks and breaking various bones.

Even though it was snowing all day Monday the kids had school but then the Birmingham City Council took the unusual step of issuing a blanket closure for all city schools for Tuesday. And then we had no snow at all... To be fair to them the sidewalks were very dangerous though.

Apparently we are supposed to get another storm tomorrow and then again on Friday. It will be interesting to see how they handle it. A lot of parents are upset that the schools were closed because they had to stay home from work. The news said 1 in 5 workers stayed home....

A New Beginning...

2009-02-03T17:12:00.004Z

This is the first time I have ever really attempted to seriously keep any form of a journal and I am curious as to how it will turn out.

My intention is to try to strike an even balance between current events happening around me with memories of events from my past. Particularly, the past 10 years that I have been living and traveling around the world.

I hope that this will act as a magnet for my memories of events that me and/or my children can look back on in the future and reflect at how fortunate I have been in my life while maybe learning from my mistakes and errors in judgement.

Although, I must admit...

I have no idea where this will all lead...