Back in the sands...

Afternoon all!

Another week goes by and I do another trip to Saudi Arabia, my most favourite place in the world, not! I did a job in the middle of the desert in the south of Saudi Arabia. This site was as remote as they come. We were 200 km from Sharoura and 160 km from Najran. Nothing but the cement plant in between. The only thing that was good was the drive back to Najran. We were on the main road to Najran when the saudi driver asked me if I fancied a short cut. Well, driving the deserted roads in the south is boring at the best of times so I agreed. It should knock of about half an hour of the 2 1/2 hour drive...

So the guy hits the brake and leaves the road and starts racing across the sands!

At some point he tells me that one of his mates has a camel farm just up the road (well, road...) and would I like to see it... So we swung by and low and behold, in the middle of nowhere there was this herd of camels eating the sparse grass... The tents were where his mate lived... They were bedouins...

Thats the camels... Smelly bastards...

This was the view 360 degrees around for half an hour... Luckily we were driving a big Toyota Landcruiser Patrol with big balloon tires on it...

When we finally made it back to the road this was the first availabe gas station... Modern stuff 'ey?

When I finally got to England after a two hour flight to Dammam, a 7 hour wait at Dammam airport, a 6 hour flight to Amsterdam and a 1 hour flight to Heathrow, I arrived at 7 in the morning and it was snowing. So in 24 hours from 35 degree heat to -2 degrees was a bit of a shock to the system... Then when we were bombing down the M25 we saw at least 5 shunts and crashes in the snow on the motorway. When we made it to the A120 my taxi driver took a corner a bit too fast and he lost it. We ended up sliding across two lanes before we ended up skirting along a banked side of the road. The car nearly ended up on the roof but with an incredible amount of luck the car swerved back on to the road and we managed to get back to Sudbury with only some cosmetic damage to the grill and front bumper... Scared the crap out of me though... (Ron, if you want to wake me up in the taxi you can just shout you know...)

By the way, KLM was on top form again. They lost all my luggage on the way back. Saved me having to wait on my suitcases and having to carry them myself. They dropped them off half a day later, incompetent bastards... At least I have made Platinum again on Skyteam...

Next week I believe I am off to Ecuador. I have to go back to Guayaquil for a small 4 day job. After that I should be Turkey for a week and that should be it for the year... Thank god, it has been a hectic year, I will not forget 2008 in a hurry...

Cheerio,
Alex.

Turkey again...

Afternoon,

The second late update... Turkey this time...

Last week I went to Bucak in Turkey. That is about 50 km from Antalya on the Anatolian coast of the meditereanean...

The job for AS Cimento went really well, they were chuffed to bits with their new equipment after it was all commissioned. The piccie above is the road coming into Antalya from the north. They have a huge head of Kemal Ataturk chiselled out the rock there. Mr Kemal is the founder of the modern Turkish state.

This was some small bird I ate in Keptur restaurant near Bucak. I guess judging by the size it wasn't a chicken... I put my fork next to it just to show how small the thing was. I guess it might have been a sparrow or something. My turkish wasn't good enough to find out anything else beside the fact that it was a bird of some kind hahahahaha....

This is me and my two new friends from AS Cimento on the roof after we installed and tested the gear... This is Mr Tunay Bakan and another guy who's name has escaped me...

This is myself doing some software training with the operators...

This was the view from the Sheraton Voyager hotel in Antalya where I stayed the first night. Excellent place even though it was quiet there, it's off-season at the moment...

OK, more later,

Alex.

Thailand and Malaysia...

Afternoon all,

Another late update... I have just come back from Turkey but before that I was off to Malaysia and Thailand. I went to Malaysia to teach some Lafarge staff how to use our software. From there I flew to Thailand to do a system repair on a broken system at Thung Song.

The work in Malaysia went very well. The customer had just been told by their management that they would have to cut costs for next budgets and here I am training them on software that can safe them loadsa cash. I Must say, this was the most attentive audience I have ever had...

After staying in Kuala Lumpur for only two days it was on to Thailand. Luckily I had managed to put a rest day in the schedule so I could catch up on some very much needed sleep... sodding jetlag....

The pictures in this entry are all ass over tits as i can not add more than 5 pictures at a time and when you do the second batch it puts them above the previous ones... never mind, I must be thick...

This picture above shows the atrium of the Emerald Hotel in Bangkok. This picture was taken from 10 floors up and you can still make out the HUGE koi carp in the pond below...

This is the arrival at Nakorn Si Thammarat airport to go to Thung Song...

I don't know if you can make it out in the picture but if you look above the roof of the Merc you might be able to make out a guy. That was a guy who came walking across 4 lanes of traffic on top of an elephant! I cracked me up, only in Thailand...

This was the usual rains that follow me around everywhere. It bucketed down every bloody day and we are not talking about a little shower here....

This was the seminar that I did my training session on. It was very well organised in a beautiful hotel just outside Kuala Lumpur. If you are ever looking for a posh hotel in KL you can't go wrong with the Saujana Resort. Beautiful place with very good staff...

Yours truly looking stoopid in a suit....

The conference room were I bored the 15 plant managers to sleep hahahahaha!

In the evening the Lafarge people very kindly invited me to a dinner in KL. We passed the famous Petronas Towers on the way to the restaurant. The picture isn't great, it was taken from inside a bus that was splattered with rain. Still you can see the beautiful towers in the background....

Cheerio,
Alex.