Al Areen

Al Areen Wildlife Park is the brainchild of His Highness the Shaikh bin Isa bin Sulman Al-Khalifa, the Crown Prince of Bahrain. I guess that when you're interested in wildlife, and you happen to be a prince, you don't just invest in a good pair of binoculars and a few guide books--you buy a lot of almost extinct animals and put them in a park. Al Areen is home to a tedious variety of oryx, and a lot of other small 4-legged animals with horns (goats, deer, ibex, sheep, addax, gazelle). I think the prince would have been quite disappointed with my lack of interest in these animals, but I did find some animals that caught my attention in the smaller zoo area. And let me just say that zoos are always much more interesting in countries where safety regulations are not really the norm...

Have you ever seen a porcupine? I hadn't. Here is a pile of porcupines for your viewing pleasure--I found them surprisingly cute. I wonder if they prefer to sleep in a heap, or if the fact that it was well into the 100s and they only had one little hut for shade had anything to do with their sleeping arrangements. These are the ostriches. I believe this picture was taken before one of them decided that my hand would be a tasty afternoon treat. I think I can see the culprit planning his sneak attack right behind me. Luckily I escaped without any permanent damage, though I did give everyone watching a good show. Remember how I hate birds? I would encourage you to all go out and buy a lovely pair of ostrich skin shoes. Or a purse.
I loved the fros on these guys. I was secretly hoping that they would make themselves useful and bite the highly annoying boy whose parents were complete morons and let him continue in his unruly behavior despite the fact that he was seriously disturbing both the people and the wildlife. And now that I think about it, my less than charitable thoughts probably explain why I got bit by the ostrich later in the afternoon. Karma. It'll get you.
And finally, me and the Brit mom, standing in front of a perfectly lovely toxic-wastesque watering hole. I can see that I need to stop by the royal palace and let the prince know that his bird sanctuary needs a bit of attention.

In the News (Parts 2 and 3)

I'll tell you what's strange. Going home from work one night, and not knowing if you will be coming back the next day, or if it will be a holiday. Do you finish the spreadsheet you are working on and send it to NYC, or are you going to have a chance to finish it tomorrow and still make your deadline? Because everything here is based on the lunar calendar, you'll never know until the moon-sighting committee makes its final decision. And lastly, another odd addition. Some countries worry about teen pregnancy, and others...
I just want to know--how do you prove that Herdsman X's goat impregnated Herdsman Y's goat? Genetic testing?

The Destroyer

I like tours. I especially like private tours, where you can ask all the questions you want and go to the places that not everyone sees. So when my friend Jeff invited me on a tour of the destroyer in port, I was excited (despite not knowing what a destroyer was). He didn't think I would want to go, and was worried that I might be bored. He didn't know that I love private tours.

A destroyer is a ship that protects an aircraft carrier, just in case anyone is wondering. An aircraft carrier is never left alone in the ocean, and has destroyers with it at all times.

Anyway, I came straight from work, and unfortunately was wearing heels. Heels were not the footwear of choice for this excursion, and if you ever get invited to a destroyer I wouldn't recommend them. First of all, it was a bit of a walk down the pier to even get to the ship. Second of all, it turns out that the ramps that lead up to the ship, the ones that look like they ever so gradually incline in pictures and movies, are in reality about 45 degrees steep. I would have had a hard time climbing the ramp (I'm sure this is not the correct term for it, by the way) even if I was wearing tennis shoes.

Once I made it up the ramp, I discovered that there are small holes in the metal on all of the outside decks, the perfect size for a heel to slip through. I had a few near faceplants, and got a good calf workout from walking on tip toes.

We went to the control room, and sat in the captain chairs. That gun was definitely loaded.
We went to check out the helicopter. The propellors and tail all fold up so it can fit in it's little hangar. This picture was a insult to Jeff's manliness. Apparently Navy guys don't pose for pictures when they are giving tours, but he was a good sport.
The most exciting part of the tour was our climb down the hatch to the inside of the big gun. Jeff's friend was showing us the gun, and decided that the fastest way down was the hatch in the front of the ship. Jeff was not thrilled with this idea, as he said that hatches are not very easy to negotiate (even for sailors) and he didn't think it was safe to take 3 inexperienced girls down one. Aforementioned heels did not help in negotiating this challenge, which again, would have probably been difficult for me in gym shoes. Hatches look so easy in the movies, and I realize now that I have received a poor education on Navy life from Hollywood.

Here we are inside the gun. I forgot what kind of gun it was, but those bullets to the right are awfully large.
It only took me a few minutes onboard to figure out that a sailors life is most definitely not the life for me. But I had fun anyway.

Recent purchases

This is the store where I have spent many an hour and many a dinar. The shopkeepers know me. We're friends of sort now, and they always bring me a beverage of my choice while I shop, since it is usually at least a 2 hour ordeal. But as you can see from the below picture (which is only a tiny fraction of the store)--there are a lot of things to peruse. The man (I am blanking on his name right now) is from Pakistan, and is here working to save money so that he can get married to his fiance, who is still in Pakistan. He talks to his mom every day, and once we had an interesting discussion about whether or not children love one parent more than the other. He says that all sons (including himself) love their mom more. I told him I loved my parents the same, and he didn't believe me.
Anyway, the last time I went in the store, I bought quite a bit, and now I might be having buyer's remorse. I can't decide if the items are really as great as I originally thought they were, and think that maybe I should take some of them back. If you have any opinions, please share.

You should probably understand how the stores here work. There are no price tags, and you can pretty much guarantee that the prices for Americans are going to be marked up at least 30%, because they think we're all rich. And compared to a lot of people, we are. But if you don't like to bargain, you're going to get ripped off.

Here's what to do:
1. Pick what you want, getting prices on individual items along the way. Remember these prices and keep a running total in your head. Bargain a little on the pieces, but not too much.
2. Put everything you have gathered on the counter and tell them that you want the best price, which should be discounted based on volume. You should have a price in your head that you are willing to pay.
3. If the price they come back with is higher than the price in your head, you should continue to bargain. You might have to go through a few iterations of this cycle. It can be time consuming. Don't be intimidated.
4. Once they get close to the price in your head and you can tell they aren't going to go any lower, pick something that you had previously looked at, and say that you will pay their asking price provided they give you a gift of whatever the item is. Sometimes they offer the gift up themselves.

For example, this coral ring was a gift with my purchase. I liked it, but didn't feel the need to have it in my life for the price they wanted.
This is a henna pot (it was used to use the henna for tattoos). I love the henna pot, but I am not sure that it matches my decor. I have eclectic taste, and like to collect things from places I have traveled, but this practice doesn't always lead to a cohesive decor.
This is a silk rug. It was also a gift. What can I say--it pays to be a repeat customer. I think it would look great framed on a wall, but I had a hard time deciding what color and pattern to get. I run into the same problems I did with the henna pot.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about shopping here is the fact that they will give you several hundred dollars of goods on the honor system. The very first time I went, they told me I could take whatever I wanted, and pay for it later. I thought that was quite a bit of trust to be putting on a stranger. For all they knew I could have been flying out the next day, never to be seen again...

Congratulations

Watching the US presidential election from the Middle East has been an eye-opening experience. I had no idea how much everyone here would be interested in the outcome. I heard a range of comments leading up to election day, and I thought I would share some of my favorites:

• "Obama is a Muslim, and Nostradomus predicted that the lion, which is generally understood to be the US, would fall at the hand of Muslim--this could be very bad." I informed my coworker that Obama was actually a Christian, though perhaps an extremist Christian. She felt better.
  
• "Even if Obama wins, if they don't want him, they will just kill him. That's what they do here. That's what happened with Princess Diana. She was pregnant, you know. They killed other presidents they don't like. Didn't you study American history? You should know." Oh boy--a conspiracy theorist. I tried to get her to tell me who "they" were. She couldn't. I tried to explain that there are crazy people who have hated every president ever elected. She was insistent that "they" wouldn't like a black man. I finally gave up.
• "Kimberly, who is going to win the election tomorrow?" My status as American elevated me to a political expert with all of the answers. I answered more questions about how the election worked, how I could vote from halfway across the world, and when the results would be available than I did HR questions.

When Wednesday rolled around, I was greeted at the door by the head of our consumer banking group. "Congratulations Kimberly," he said with a huge smile and a handshake. "Congraluations for what?" I asked, thinking perhaps I had won a contest, received a surprise promotion, or had a baby I knew nothing about. "Congratulations on the election. You have a new president now, aren't you happy?" "But I didn't vote for Obama," I told him. I think I burst his bubble. He had stayed up late into the night to watch the election results on the news. He had listened to Obama's acceptance speech and wanted to discuss what he thought was one of the most powerful addresses he had ever heard. He was shocked and apalled that I hadn't done any more than check the results online before I came in to work.

And I realized that I have been taking my right to vote for granted. I imagine that he would have offered the same congratulations if McCain had won. The fact that I have a say in who governs my country (and also has a huge influence on the rest of the world) is a reason for him to celebrate. Since then, I have had a steady stream of people come to offer their congratulations. I learned my lesson the first time, and now I graciously accept their well wishes. One woman finally asked, "Is it appropriate to congatulate you? We don't know because we can't vote, but we are very excited for you." Yes, I think congratulations are perfectly appropriate.

Where's the bathroom please?

I'm sorry, you must have misunderstood. Where's the restroom? The ladies room? The lou? The facilities? Wash room? Lavatory? Toilet?

Unfortunately, all queries led to this:
If it's any consolation, they do offer this trough-like feature to wash your feet, just in case you...um...splash yourself.
I didn't find it any consolation, either. In the future, I will stick to private restrooms.

My weekend

On Thursday night I attended a birthday party for my HR colleague Sharon's two daughters. Sharon has a knack for making everyone feel at ease, and is kind to people regardless of their social and economic stations. I appreciate that characteristic in a country where the class system is very pronounced, and people are only nice if you are the right color and from the right country. (I happen to be a lovely shade of white and carry the right passport, which makes me immensely popular. I hate it, and am not interested in being friends with people who can't treat everyone with respect.) There were probably over 100 people crammed into her little villa and the surrounding yard, and everyone had a good time. I only planned to stay for an hour, and ended up staying for three. The kids were quite enamored with me, and Sharon told me it was because they had never seen a "Westerner" before. I am glad that my presence was so educational. During the course of the evening Doris from the IT department gave me a lengthy speech about why I should move to Bahrain permanently. When I told the her that I was pretty sure neither my parents nor my boyfriend would be overly fond of that idea, she told me that they should just move here too. Mom? Dad? Garrett?

Latif, who retired from the finance department in August, took Sharon and I to lunch at a traditional Bahraini cafe. And when I say traditional, I mean hole-in-the-wall, maybe someone should call the health department (if Bahrain has one), I-would-never-in-a-million-years-stop-and-eat-here sort of establishment. It was basically a row of rickety tables in the middle of an alley, with sheets tied above as canopies from the sun. There were two cracked, crookedly mounted sinks in the alley for hand washing (as silverware was optional), and Sharon and I were quite out of place considering that we were neither male nor Muslim. But the food was excellent, and it was a good thing we had Latif with us, since there were no menus and little spoken English. Before I came to Bahrain, I had some rules about what sort of meat I would eat: boneless, skinless, headless, and fatless (and breat meat is preferred thank you very much). Those rules don't really have a place in my life now. Latif ordered two types of fish, which included bones, skins, and head. I ordered a chicken stew, which included bones and skin (and no breast in sight). Latif kept putting bits of fish on my plate, trying to give me the best parts so that I fully appreciated the local catch (called hammam). I was trying to pick apart my chicken with one hand so that I could swoosh the flies away with the other. And so it went.

Last night I was invited to dinner by another coworker named Kaji. Kaji's wife Parvi made a huge feast, and I think she must have cooked all day. Parvi is very pregnant, and is not eating sugar or flour until the baby comes, so she couldn't even eat most of what she made, and I felt bad that she had gone to so much trouble (and thus felt obligated to eat everything put in front of me, resulting in my being quite ill by the end of the evening and still full when I woke up this morning). I love Indian food, and thoroughly enjoyed trying some new southern Indian dishes (it turns out that all of my favorite masalas, kormas, and paneers are from the north). Kaji instructed his son Adhavan to call me "auntie," which I found quite endearing. And the conversation was interesting. During the course of the evening, we discussed arranged marriages, cremation, Bill Clinton, housewifery, and the number of official languages in India (15!!--I had no idea).

I am very grateful for the immense kindness and hospitality that has been shown to me, and know that my time here would be very miserable indeed without the people who have adopted me into their lives. I only hope that one day I can be for others what these people have been for me.