Mexican it is then....

Evening,

As I said the hotel restaurant was crap so I did go outdoors in the end. At least there was a reasonable mexican just down the road. I have been to Mexico quite a few times now and really like the food. There. In the US it is a bit hit and miss. I have stunning ones in Arizona and terrible ones in Kansas. This one was in between.

The service was a right laugh as the waitresses who didn't speak an awful lot of english and sortof didn't know who did what table. As a result I ordered 1 Corona and got three from three different waitresses. No worries, I was thirsty. The salsa was rather tame. I have had salsas in Guadalajara in Mexico just from street vendors that would rip your head off, so spicy. This one was rather mild but they did have Cholula on the table and with a half bottle of that it became nice and hot.

And yes, I made the same mistake again, ordered a 'small sideorder' of chicken wings and in the piccie above I had eaten already about 12. They had cleaned out my bones tray twice... Never mind. The Fajitas Texasana were good. It was just chicken and beef fajitas with a handfull of shrimps thrown on. They were well nice. I only had 5 beers as I had to drive.

At least it beat the Holiday Inn restaurant hands down. And it should make me nice and smelly for the flight home. For some reason when I am on an aeroplane something happens to my bowels and I become, how shall we say, windy? This should be good for at least three rows of people in front and behind me trying to find out who it is that is stinking out the plane. Nobody ever seems to think its me, I'm usually busy loooking around trying to find the culprit, well aware of the fact its me of course.

OK, gotta go and get some kip, this could be the last sleep for two days coming up...

Taraaa,

Alex The Windy One.

Santee State Park, South Carolina...

Afternoon,

Today it's monday the 23rd of July. I am in South Carolina doing some work for Holcim Holly Hill. The work is going great and with a bit of luck I should be on a plane back home to the UK tomorrow evening. I'm flying from Charleston to Atlanta, Georgia and from there to Gatwick, UK. Should be home by 3, maybe 4 o'clock on wednesdayafternoon. That is, after I have done another full days work and then 18 hours travel, nice 'ey?

I phoned the missus today and she told me that the weather has been absolutely attrocious in England with loads of towns flooded and the army rescueing people... Hmmm, finally its crap weather when I'm not there. Normally when I phone the missus and tell her its 28 degrees where I am she tells me its 32 at home....

Today after work I took a few wrong turns driving home and found myself on the road to the Santee State Park. This is a park that is part of Lake Marion and the surrounding swamps. As I have bugger all else to do here as there are no bars in walking distance I decided to go and have a look.

The road there was a winding road that was deserted and after about 10 miles found myself on the shore of lake Marion.

This lake looks weird. There is a fir tree forest in the middle of it. Just trees, poking out the water. It did look nice. The first piccie here is the shoreline where I parked, illegally I believe as I had to drive all the way up a no entry signposted road to get there... weird...

This was the boating and fishing jetty with it's usual live bait shop. As you can see it is heaving with people.... NOT...
I dunno if you an make it out on this picture (again taken with my mobile as the insurance is being difficult about paying for my smashed camera, don't get me started on that...) but what you see is not the other shoreline. That are those weird fir trees standing in the water...

That was all the time I had there as some dude came walking up to me and started saying something about parking charges or entry fees etc so I let him know I only spoke Armenian and drove off.

I'm now back in the shitty Holiday Inn trying to decide what to have for dinner. The restaurant here is not much cop, the staff are friendly but they don't know much about running a restaurant. I had to ask for cutlery, well, knife and fork, as the lady didn't know what cutlery was. Also the main came out before the starter so maybe I'll give that a miss tonight. There are the usual suspects right outside the door, Maccie D, Wendy's, Maurice's BBQ (?), Denny's, Hardees etc so choice enough if you like a heart attack in a bun.... The life on the road 'ey? And you thought it was all glamour 'ey?

OK, gotta go and check my emails... Maybe I've won the lottery and I can stop all this globe trotting... (Chance would be a fine thing...)

Just heard from the office that next week I'm off, back to the Middle East to Oman. Sometimes in the morning when I wake up I have to look in my diary just to see where the hell I am....

Cheerio,

Alex The Globetrotter.

Coolest ATM ever!

Afternoon,

Another update from the country of the huge portions. I made the mistake again last night at dinner to order a starter and a main course. What I had forgotten that here in the US ( By the way, I am now in South Carolina in a place called Santee on the edge of Lake Marion...) that for example when you order a salad for starter you don't get just a few green leaves and some olives... No, you get about 4 heads of lettuce, 5 or 6 whole onions, a few farms full or carrots etc etc... So after I had that I was having trouble eating my half cow (steak)... Never mind, at least they aren't stingy like the french...

The picture below was something I spotted when I was driving around Louisville trying to find a Best Buy store to buy a laptop charger for my brother in law. Next to the Wendy's there was a drive-in ATM. How lazy can ya git?

So for people that can't be bothered to get out of their car they have made an ATM you can drive up to.... Amazing? What ever next? Drive-in bars? Drive-in whorehouses?

Cheerio,

Alex in South Carolina.

Louisville Kentucky...

Afternoon all,

I'm on my travels again. At the moment I am in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm here to do a short job for a Cemex customer that has a system on the blink. The work is going well but as usual I have brought crap weather with me. Right now it is pissing down, thundering and there is a serere weather warning in place.

I think I again have confirmed the fact that the name Rainman is apt for me. I have had rain in Saudi Arabia in the desert, I have had it pissing down in the Mojave desert in California and now this place.

It started out this morning hot as hell, 90 degrees with 80% humidity, pretty unpleasant... But now rainman strikes again. See the piccie below. Its the weather warning for right now...

That nice orange blob on the doppler radar is right outside my hotel. Never mind, there is a bar downstairs that does cold Corona so I don't care. I don't even have to leave the hotel to score a cold one, bring it on!

On sunday I leave for Holly Hill in South Carolina so for anybody reading this that lives there, enjoy the sun, its gonna end on sunday when I arrive!

Take Care,

The Flying Dutchman.

My 40th birthday...

Afternoon,

Last sunday, 08-07-2007 I celebrated my coming of age. I have finally reached that milestone of 40. A lot of my friends asked me if I was depressed about it, but no, I didn't mind at all. When I turned 30, that was a but of a bummer as that sorta is the end of your youth but 40? Who gives a toss? My parents come over from Holland to celebrate as well and we all had a good time. Below is my dad taking pictures of me taking pictures. (Why do people do that???)

These are, from left to right, my mum, my mother in law and my dad. (After a few beers...)

I didn't have a big do, just family and some friends and a good time was had by all. We ended up sitting outside till two in the morning clustered around the chiminea while burning anything combustible in sight. The dog appreciated the barbeque as he ate whatever was surplus to requirements.

Basically a nice quiet do which suited me fine. I got some nice pressies. My parents gave me a nice watch, my wife gave me a digital photoframe, a photobook about East Anglia from the mother-in-law, and my friend Marion gave me the best present ever, a beautifully framed picture of my dog Mickey that passed away last year.

A good time was had by all, (onto the next 40 hahahahahahaha...)

Cheerio,

Alex.

Fish eat fish...

Afternoon,

This is the coolest fishing picture I've seen for ages. I don't know where it came from but fishing maestro Allebone send it to me.

It shows a little pike hooked by the fisher and then a big pike snatched the hooked pike, bloody cannibals, pike....

Alex.

Jordan Cement Factories Co Ltd....

Afternoon,

This is what I actually did in Jordan Cement. We installed and commissioned a infrared kiln camera from Thermoteknix Systems Ltd in Cambridge, England. The first piccie shows the contracting staff getting the installation done.


This is a little detail of the back of the camera. It is a infrared water and air cooled camera that sits inside a furnace that is approx 1500 degrees C. The camera inserts and retracts with the use of pnuematics. The camera sends it image via optical fibre to the control room where the process staff can analyze the images.

This was after a long day, we finished at about 20:00 and as we were leaving the control room my friend Mohammed Fayez Mustafa told me that some of his site staff was having some food around the corner frm the office and maybe I wanted something too. Well, as I had missed dinner by that time I agreed.

Thats Mohammed second from the right with his mouth full. It was some meat with tomatoes which we ate with fresh flatbreads, very good! After that we had (of course!) tea. Nothing happens out there without having tea before, during or after a job hahaha....

This was the main course, like I said meat with tomatoes cooked up by one of the lads...

These two men here are the two that made my job very easy there. The left guy is Omar Al-Jawabreh and the right guy is Mohammed again. Omar was the head of the contractors that did all the hard graft to a very high standard and Mohammed was the Instrumentation Technician of Jordan Cement. Both guys were highly professional engineers that made my life easy, thanks guys!

More later,

Alex.

Jordan, stunning place....

Afternoon all,

I'm back safe and sound from Jordan. I went there last week to do a camera job for Jordanian Cement in Rashadiyah. I got to Amman international airport at 20:00. When you arrive it's one of these places where you have to buy your visa upon arrival. I went straight to the desk and gave them my dutch emergency passport and my 10 jordanian dinar. Well, I don't think they had seen one of these temporary passports before. To cut a long story short, they made my life hell for an hour and a half and then decided to give me my entry visa anyway. The poor taxi driver of the customer by this time had been waiting for over three hours... He then swiftly raced me into Amman to the Crowne Plaza. The piccie below is the view from my room. I finally got to the room at 22:30. So needless to say the first thing I did was sling my bags in the room and the second thing was to head down to the bar for a few swift Corona's. They had some caterwauling karaoke act on that sounded like they were skinning cats but as they all looked rather tasty with very short skirts and ample bosoms I didn't give a toss....

The view from the Crowne Plaza in Amman...

The next morning I was picked up by the company rep who took me to Rashadiya. This place is about 200 kilometer south of Amman. They put me up in the most fantastic guesthouse I have ever stayed in. They put me in the Ecolodge in Dana Wildlife Reserve. The piccie above is the view from my balcony. It was absolutely stunning. The place looked out over a massive canyon where they had Ibex deer, coyotes, striped hyenas and all sorts of other critters.

This was the sun setting over the mountains over the Dana Wildlife Reserve. Again, beautiful. As place was about 4000 foot up in the mountains, even though it was in the Middle East and very sunny, the temperatures were very nice. About 25-30 C during the day and about 20 at night. Very nice when you compare it to Saudi Arabia where it is 50 C at the moment....

This was the old village of Dana. It was originally ruins but they have rebuild it and are motivating the original people to come back here and work in the tourism industry.

One of the great culinary experiences that I had here was trying the national Jordanian dish of Mansaf. This is goats meat braised in goats yoghurt. It took a bit of getting used to but the goat meat was excellent! I didn't have the opportunity to go to Petra which was only 40 kilometers up the road but as I have to go back there in September I will make the effort to go there next time as that is one of the seven wonders of the world.

All in all I really enjoyed my visit to this Middle Eastern country where you really do feel safe.

Cheerio,

Alex.