My boring ass life

I’m back after a little vacation from the blogs.

My parents will be visiting us here in the UAE for Christmas, something which I’m looking forward to. It will give them a good dose of the great UAE traditions of "revving the Land Cruiser" and playing loud obnoxious Arabic music till the late hours of morning. Not to even mention the dazzling fireworks being let off at 3 in the morning. Ah, good times...I'll have to keep my dad on a lease though, as I can see him stampeding through the neighborhood telling the Arabs what decent behavior is and what is not. Unfortunately in the UAE if you as much as look at a guy the wrong way, they call the police and then you have crap to deal with that you rather would have wanted to avoid.

I've also bought my tickets for the Dubai rugby 7's. I hope our boys can win the tournament again like last year. The Dubai 7's is a pretty big event in the UAE. The rugby starved expats from all over the world that live in the UAE and the Middle East, flock to Dubai and it generally turns into a big party. Last year 50 000 spectators attended daily. I'll be sure to post some videos on Youtube of the event.

So there you go, now you are all updated and well informed of the exceptional boring life of Spear The Almighty.

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Back from Milan

This week I had the opportunity to go to Milan for work. Unfortunately we spend most of the time doing what we were supposed to...working.

We also stayed about 40km outside the city so there wasn’t really much to do. We did get the opportunity to walk around the city for about 6 hours on our last day. We did surprisingly well to navigate the shuttles, trains and metro. I guess if you can do it in Londen and Paris you can do it in Milan. We further walked a lot and got to see the Opera house, one big ass castle and the famous Cathedral. We tried to see the Last Supper, but unfortunately it was too busy and we were running out of time. Italy did intrigue me enough so that I'll make a return visit one of these days.

Currently work has become seriously hectic and I’m still hitting the books every day for my UNISA exams. Maybe I should start studying and stop hitting my text books. It might help.

My social life and family life is basically non existent. Anyway, if things go well, a month from now everything would have quiet down. I just have to keep at it.

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My Son

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Deep Thoughts

As I sat in another meeting this morning, I couldn’t help but think how lucky I am to have this opportunity to work and live here in Abu Dhabi. Yes, most of the time I want to beat my colleagues to death with a stapler. Sometimes I fantasize about pushing some of them through the 16th floor window. Most days the call of Africa just becomes too much and I want to come home and daily I have to stop myself from giving a taxi driver a snot klap.

I did however gain incredible work experience and more importantly life experience here.

In our meeting it was me (South African), a British dude that grew up in the US, two Indians, and one Japanese fellow. After the meeting my Syrian assistant and I had a chat about this and that until one Egyptian guy came and bother me to sign cheques. The Pilipino secretary then called me and informed me our external counsel, whom is German, wants to speak with me.

Living and working in surroundings like this I have learned a lot about other cultures and tolerance. I have learned that Japanese will say "yes" but come back tomorrow and say "no." I have learned that by rule of thumb my Arab colleagues work at a much slower pace than for example my Indian colleagues. I've learned that German's think they can ask you crazy prizes because their products are superior. "It is German," they say. Never mind that they manufacture them in China. I have learned that the straight forward (reguit manier) way in which many South Africans deal, confuse Arabs. They like to haggle.

Most importantly I have also learned that there are always exceptions to the rule and that we humans are deep down, pretty much the same. We all want peace, we all want prosperity, and we all want love. Most importantly, we all fucking hate people that should be working, but instead they sit and blog the whole day.

Deep shit hey! I hope you all learn something from this entry.

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Whazup?

Dear Diary

It has been nearly three weeks since I last blogged. I’m just so damn busy at work I just can’t keep up with the blogging. So much has happened these past few weeks and yet so little...

I watched District 9 and I enjoyed it.

I watch the Boks win the Tri Nations and I enjoyed it.

My cousin came to visit us all the way from SA which was very cool. We miss our family here in the UAE and it is always nice when friends and family visit us.

I always thought Julius Malema was an asshole, now I know he is.

I laugh at the complete and utter fuck up SA Athletics has made with the Caster Semenya affair.

I didn’t read anything about Joost or Steve in the online newspapers. That was awesome.

I watched season one and two of Dexter. I think it is brilliant, although very dark.

I have to start studying like crazy as of today. Yuck

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