Home Sweet Home

Assalamu alaikum (which means "Peace be unto you" in Urdu) and welcome back to my rousing adventures. Well I am slowly getting setled in. As I mentioned in my last post I managed to get here without my baggage, but I managed to get that squared away in a couple days. The only thing left was the couple boxes I shipped with some clothes. After talking to the Personal Property guys they said I could wait a few weeks for them to get a customs waiver or I could go down to the airport and talk to the customs guys in person and get it in that day. As you might expect I chose the latter. The only problem was I would have to drive to the airport.

I mentioned a bit in my last post about the strange situation that is driving in Islamabad. I haven't done too much driving myself; I have been a passanger more times than not, but I have seen a few strange things. I was going back to the airport here to fill out some paperwork so I could get the few boxes I shipped out here and there was a bit of a back up due to a traffic light being out. We were in the righ turn lane (which crosses traffic since they drive on the left side of the road here) and amid the trucks and cars was a flat bed cart being pulled by a donkey. Another morning we were going down one of the roads in town and there was a couple guys leading a camel. I've also seen horses and cows on the road. And just today I was again going to the airport, this time to fly myself, and I saw, and I'm not kidding, a guy walking a small bear. Not a shaggy dog, but a bear. I don't know where he got it but there it was. But as odd as the menagery on the road can be it is nothing compared to the people driving. The guy I releaved here said he got a call from the States from a friend who said he was feeling very low and considering suicide so he called a suicide prevention hotline. The call got out-sourced to Pakistan. When the guy told the operator he felt suicidal they got really excited and asked if he could drive a truck. It's kind of like a strage game of "Frogger". Pedestrians refuse to walk on the sidewalk (which they do actually have in places) and instead insit on walking in the streets, or worse, crossing the street right as you are coming. They will step into the road right in front of you without considering looking first. It's amazing to me that there aren't more people run over then there are. Traffic lanes here are strickly advisory in nature. Drivers often don't bother to even pick a lane and instead use them all. And if there is enough room for a car to fit it becomes a lane. We joke you have to be able to use all four lanes of a two lane road to drive. The Pakistanis are also very big proponents of car pooling You will regularly see 6-8 people in a car or a family of five on a motorcycle (dad driving, a kid on the handle bars in front, a kid behind dad, mom behind that kid sitting side-saddle and holding the baby). On the same trip as the bear sighting I saw a bus filled to over-flowing (literally). There were about 25 school kids riding on top of the bus. Personally I always wanted to ride home from school like that but they kept telling me to keep my arms and legs inside the bus. It would actually be quite impressive if they weren't trying desperately to either run you over or get run over themselves. On second thought it is less like Frogger and more like Burnout.

As I mentioned before, I got in country on the 1st and it took me about sumer and the weather was actually very nice. One thing about being a Gulf State two days to get my internal clock ajusted, so you can imagine that the last thing I really wanted to do was to take another trip. Regretably they didn't ask me and instead scheduled talks between Naval Central Command and the Pakistan Navy on the 9th in the Kindom of Bahrain. It was actually a nice trip (aside from the 6 am flight there and the 12 am flight back). Bahrain is a very small country on the Arabian Gulf and can get very hot in the summer. Fortunately it was not is that they have a good deal of oil and are by and large a very rich country. As a result they have some great building project and some wonderful architecture. Unfortunately, I suck and failed to bring my camera (I should have it sew to my sleave like a pair of mittens). I did get a disposable camera and take some pictures, but have not been able to get them developed. Hopefully I will have them for the next post.

Well that is all for the moment. Sorry there isn't more, but what can I say, there isn't much going on. Perhaps things will get more interesting (in a good way) soon. Until then, be good, and if you can't be good, be good at it.