Rachel’s Reflections

Yes, that’s right.  You read the title correctly.

The pool has challenges every month.  This month’s is swim the distance from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia (we just call it Saudi) during the month of April.  The distance is 20,000 meters, which is 400 laps.

I signed up today.  Already  I have done 1500 meters.  And that’s just in one day.  I put a ticker on this blog so everyone can keep track of my progress (and help keep me motivated).  Look at the bottom of the sidebar to see the ticker.  Only 18500 meters to go!

We’ve actually had a thunderstorm here!  That is majorly exciting.  I thought Bahrain never had storms, ever.  I am in my second year here on this island, and this is the first storm we’ve had.  Sure we have dust storms, but here I’m specifically speaking of storms with some kind of water falling out of the sky.

Last year it rained some.  This year, it’s only rained once before that I know of, unless it’s rained during the night sometimes.  That’s possible, but I don’t get up in the middle of the night to check.  The one time before last night that it rained was the 8th of February and it rained for only an hour, but as I got caught outside in it, I got wet.

Last night I started hearing noises that sounded like thunder.  Since it NEVER thunders here–at least so far it hadn’t–I thought it couldn’t possibly be thunder.  Fireworks, perhaps?  But then when I went to the bedroom for something and happened to be standing quite close to the window, I heard it again.  It was definitely thunder.  So I opened my balcony doors and listened.  The wind was noisy–not unusual–but I thought it sounded like maybe rain too.  It was too dark to tell, though.

The gloomy day along with a view of the fountain that is hardly ever on. When I peeked outside I noticed it and decided to get a picture even though it's not a nice day for photography.

I don’t know if it rained last night (I think it did), but I do know that it rained today!  Today dawned overcast and very gloomy.  Gloomy is unusual here in Bahrain.  We have sunny much more often.  I’d thought I left gloomy back home in Illinois when I last lived there.  But here gloomy was.  And it thundered off and on.  And then around 3:00 p.m. (don’t remember exact time) it started pouring down rain!  I watched it come down.  I couldn’t go out because the wind was blowing it in on our balcony.  In just a couple of minutes we had an inch of water on our balcony.

Almost as quickly as it began the rain stopped.  Since then it’s been gloomy again, although the weather feed I get from the Muharraq airport says it’s “Mostly Cloudy.”  It looks “All Cloudy” to me, so I don’t know what’s going on in Muharraq, but from here it looks the same.  In fact, for most of the day I’ve been barely able to see Muharraq, and if you look at a map, you’ll notice it’s quite close.  (Muharraq is the north-east island that’s “almost touching” the main island.)  That should tell you how poor visibility is.

The mud on my balcony after the rain

Part of the low visibility is due to the dust we have in the air.  Dust is nearly omnipresent and yesterday the sky was hazy with dust.  Sometimes it gets so bad it looks like yellow fog and that combined with wind makes a dust storm.  Even without wind dust still gets everywhere.  Washing your car regularly is a necessity here!  So part of the gloominess of the sky today was due to dust haze.  And when it rained we got rain mixed with dust–which makes mud.

First, I’m sorry I haven’t posted since early January.  I even had some posts planned, but they just didn’t get written.  I got busy at work and then studying for my EXW and then I got sick–for three weeks.  I call it the Bahraini Crud because that virus has swept through the island and everyone I know has had it and was sick for three or four weeks.  And it’s not the flu, either, the doctor assures me.  Besides we military get vaccinated against the flu.

But now I’m well and able to do more than stagger to work in the morning and then stagger home at night and go straight to bed.  But posts will probably be sporadic as I still need to study EXW.  I really need to get my pin.  (EXW=expeditionary warfare specialist: it’s a military qualification I’m required to get.  The pin is proof I got it and something I get to wear on my uniform.)

As you can see I updated my theme.  Not sure about the picture; I may change it.  Right now it’s showing a view of the Bahrain financial harbor (bunch of office building skyscrapers) as seen from my apartment’s balcony.

I’ve decided on a focus for my blog.  Ever since I started it in November 2007 I’ve been writing about whatever whenever.  Mostly I’ve just been trying to figure out what I’m doing with a blog and getting used to the idea of what it is and how it works.  But now I’ve decided that I need to have more of a focus.  And while obscure holidays was a lot of fun to do over the Christmas holidays, it’s not something I think would make very good subject matter for a blog over the long run, particularly since I was/would be pretty much paraphrasing from and even copying and pasting from Wikipedia.

So I thought about what I could say that maybe not very many other people were saying, and I came up with the obvious–Bahrain.  So I decided I would focus my blog on Bahrain.  And that’s why I changed the subtitle of my blog–to make it more obvious that this blog will be about Bahrain.

I don’t know how good I’ll be at this.  I’ve been having problems getting pictures off my camera, so I don’t know if I’ll have many photos.  And I may be too busy to do much more than report on what the newspaper is reporting.  By the way, anyone can read it any time they like–it’s online at Gulf Daily News.  (And it’s in English.)  There are other newspapers, too, but that’s the only one I read.

So here’s my first bit about Bahrain:  The weather is absolutely lovely today.  I sat outside for a while and read.  It’s sunny, around 70F/21C, and when sitting in the sun, feels good with short sleeves.  It’s warm but not hot yet.  Perfect weather.

Mom’s been visiting me. She got here on the 14th and she goes back soon.  I’m sorry about that; this visit has seemed so short.  But I’ve really enjoyed having her here.

Jeremy and I have taken her around to see various places.  We took her to see several historical sites: a couple of old, traditional Arabic houses where the rooms are built around a central courtyard and to some ruins: notably the oldest mosque in Bahrain and a 4,000 year old village, and an old fort that the Portugese built and also to the Burial Mounds, which just look like mounds of dirt but are actually graves thousands of years old.  We also took her to the zoo where I got attacked by a bird–I’ll try to post pictures later.  We took her to church and she and I also went to base to watch Jeremy play football (American football, not “real” football).  We haven’t gotten to see everything, but we’ve done a lot.  Other sailors are always telling me there’s nothing to do in Bahrain and they wouldn’t bring their families out because there’s nothing to do.  I don’t know what they call “something to do” because I find plenty to do.  We haven’t even taken Mom to see the museum or the other two forts or the Barbar Temple or the Grand Mosque or the Tree of Life yet.  So if anyone wants to come visit us, there’s plenty of stuff to see–unless you don’t like historical things–then maybe not so much.

One way Mom’s been a real blessing here is that she’s been helping me get organized.  I couldn’t get the whole week off, but they did let me work half days, so I would come home at noon and Mom and I would work around the house getting clothes organized and books shelved and boxes unpacked from our move back in the middle of August.  I bought some plastic organizer drawers at the NEX (Navy Exchange), and we used those to organize the clothes.  I have closets and some shelves but very little in the way of drawers, and things like socks go better in drawers, so putting things in the plastic drawers has helped a great deal.  My clothes storage area looks so much neater now.

So I’m glad Mom came.  For those of you in Illinois–thanks for letting her go for a couple of weeks.  I’ve heard that a couple of you (I won’t name names) think she’s been gone an awful long time, but for me it seems that she’s been here just a short time.  I wish she could be here a bit longer.  But I’m glad she could come for the time that she has.  Now if I could just get the rest of my family to come visit me….  (Jeff and Betsy, we should talk about this…)

I miss writing my blog, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to do it.

I have several posts about our vacation back in May that have been sitting in my drafts folder in the admin part of my blog all this time.  Someday I plan on posting them–it’ll probably be in the archives section.  What held up my posting originally was putting pictures on the blog.  It’s not that easy to put pictures on but when you have to deal with Linux and servers and Picasso it’s harder, and it also takes a lot of time.

And then we moved this summer.  And then I’ve been working 12 hour days, 60 hour weeks at work all summer, and it’s only getting busier.  And I’m trying to get my EXW pin.  And Jeremy and I started Arabic classes 4 hours a week.  We’re only doing 2 now, but it still seems a lot.  And I’ve been doing a lot of swimming, and I’m still doing taekwondo, so I’ve been very busy.  Also I got to see my cousin, Lawrence, several times this summer.  He’s in the Navy and the ship he’s on pulled into Bahrain for a port visit several times.  It was real nice to see him.

So this is why I haven’t been writing my blog.  But maybe I can find time to squeeze out a short post now and again.

For an update on what’s going on in Bahrain:

It’s almost Eid Al-Fitr or The Feast of Breaking the Fast.  This is three days that’s expected to start 30 September.  Our building has been putting up lights in preparation for it.  So have a lot of other places.  Eid Al-Fitr, or Eid as it’s called, celebrates the end of Ramadan.  Ramadan is a holy month to Muslims and has lasted the entire month of September.  (It starts 11 days earlier every year due to the Islamic calendar being a lunar one instead of a solar one.)  During Ramadan Muslims pray extra and read the Koran extra and fast.  They abstain from eating, drinking (including water), smoking, chewing gum, and having sex during daylight hours.  After dark they can eat.  And they do.  The meal is called Iftar (breaking the fast–the same word as for breakfast).  They all work fewer hours during Ramadan and the restaurants are closed during the day.  And while non-Muslims are not required to fast it is a civil offense to eat, drink, smoke, or chew gum in public during the day.  If caught you get a big fine and if non-US military (because of status-of-forces agreement) you can get thrown in jail and you stay there until Ramadan and Eid is over.

I think that a lot of the Muslims stay up all night partying with their families and sleep during the day.  Or at least they take a nap during the day.  I forgot to mention that they also all eat a meal just before daylight.  And sometimes they eat one in between Iftar and the morning one, but sometimes they combine the last two.  I forget what they’re called.  It’s definitely not uncommon for them to stay up past midnight.  And it seemed to me that they were doing a lot of shopping too.  But I should say that these Bahrainis like to stay up late any day of the year.  I think they all take naps.

I’m glad Ramadan’s almost over, but I’ll probably miss Eid.  I’ve been working until 1800 (6:00 p.m.) every night for the last several weeks and that won’t change very soon.  In fact in the short term I’ll probably have to work longer.  The locals are surprised that we aren’t getting off for Eid since it’s a big time of celebration and the whole country essentially shuts down and everyone visits their families and has fun.  But we only get American holidays off; we don’t get local holidays off.

One more thing I want to say and that is about the weather.  It’s been very hot during August and September.  The temperatures got up to the 40s Celcius with heat index (how it feels) in the 50s.  I think that’s around 130 Fahrenheit.  (It was not uncommon for the daytime temperature to be 108 or 117, etc., but the heat index was higher.)  And that’s not a dry heat–it’s humid in Bahrain.  Often when I go from air-conditioning to outside my glasses fog over and it’s a good five minutes or more before they unfog.  Sweat would just pour off of you after you’d been outside for more than ten minutes.  I mean literally pour.  Sweat would drip down your back, arms, legs, face, everything it could drip on.  It’d get in your eyes and sting them.  And you carry water around with you everywhere you go (unless you’re going somewhere off-base during the day during Ramadan, of course).  Even so, I don’t think it was as hot this year as last year.

But now it’s cooled down some.  It’s probably in the 90s F during the day and maybe it gets down to the high 80s at night.  I was walking outside tonight, and I thought it warm, but pleasant.  It was probably either low 90s or high 80s.  (So any whiners out there who think 90F is hot–come see me next summer.)

I’m going to go now as I need to get to bed.  I don’t want to, but I have to be at work at 0530 (5:30 a.m.) tomorrow. (Yuck.)  Hopefully I can start writing this blog again.  I’ve been asked by several people to start doing it again, so hopefully I can find (make) the time.  For the last year it has seemed that when I think I can’t get any busier, then I do get busier.  (shakes head)

P.S.  For the record we did a fun run September 11, and it was real hot.  It was a 5K.  I ran it in 37:18.  Again, let me say it was real hot, even though it was early morning.  But I didn’t quit; I kept running.  That last lap I was the only one still running.  Everyone else had either finished, quit, or was walking.

I promised you I would post the winner of the Bahrain Gulf Air Grand Prix.  I know it’s a little late, but work’s been crazy lately.

 So the winner is (drum roll) Ferrari’s Felipe Massa who is from Brazil.  He won last year too.  The race was 57 laps and his time was 1 hour 31 minutes and 6.970 seconds, according to the Gulf Daily News. 

Bahrain felt like it won too.  Saturday there were record crowds at the race–33,500 people attended, which was up 7,500 from last year.  And on Sunday thre were record crowds again.  One of the officers from my command attended Sunday, and he said the place was packed.  The three day attendance total was 99,981 people.  That’s very close to the 100,000 they were estimating.

So Felipe Massa was very happy to win.  Ferrari was very happy to win as well since another teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, won second.  BMW’s Robert Kubica, who is Polish won third. 

I won’t give you more details of the races, simply because I don’t know much about racing and so don’t understand much of what I’m reading in the paper.  For example, I don’t know what “pole position” is, but it says that Kubica “started from the first pole position of his career.”  Is that good or bad?  So in order not to mess up any of the details, I’ll let you go online and read about it yourself if you’re interested.  You can access the Gulf Daily News here or the Gulf Weekly here.

Today is the third and final day of the Bahrain Gulf Air Grand Prix.  The event is huge here and officially started on Friday, continued on Saturday, and will finish today, Sunday.  It is Formula One racing.  For those who don’t know, Formula One is the “funny-looking race car” racing.  It’s the kind, when you got one as a Matchbox car as a kid, and you said, “What’s this funny looking car?” your parents said, “It’s a race car.”  It’s the kind that looks like somebody squished it.  But I like them.  I think they look cool and very fast.

So all this week Bahrain prepared for this event.  The hotels and restaurants raised their prices.  Normally a hotel room is around 40BD for a night ($106.40USD), but for this event they charged 200BD ($532.00USD).  Ouch!  That’s a lot of money for one night.  It’s called “price gouging” or “charging what the market will bear” or “supply and demand” depending on who’s doing the talking.  It is clear that Bahrain understands capitalism very well.

The government was hoping to cash in on the money coming into the island as well.  It was reported in the Gulf Daily News, an English-language daily newspaper, that “Big-hitters in charge of assets worth more than $1 trillion” would be at the event.  It went on to say that, “Bahrain is hoping to convince them to invest some of that cash in the country, said Economic Board chief executive Shaikh Mohammed bin Isa Al Khalifa.”  We’ll see if Bahrain managed to draw any new investors.

The drivers started arriving the week before the race started too.  They were met at the airport by dignitaries and given VIP treatment.  Their pictures were in the Gulf Daily News.  I was going to name them here, but there’s too many.  They all arrived Wednesday and Thursday and then participated in meet and greet sessions, dinners in their honor, and other typical VIP “wining and dining” events.

Fans started arriving Thursday.  And there are a lot of them!  It’s estimated that 100,000 people are attending the races.  It seems that most of those people arrived via the Saudi Causeway from other Gulf countries like Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia.  That means they all brought their cars.  And that means they were driving on our streets.  And that means that traffic, which is usually crazy, was downright insane.  They even came into Juffair.  Juffair is a part of the city that sits on a peninsula, so it is kind of separate from it too.  It is where I live.  And it is a fair ways from “the action.”  But there were a lot more people in Juffair Friday than usual.  I guess they came looking for restaurants that weren’t outrageously expensive.  American Alley or the Juffair Strip, a section of street which has a lot of fast food restaurants, was busier than usual too.  It is usually very difficult to drive on that street owing to its normal high level of traffic, lack of parking (so people park on the street), and narrowness (so there’s no room to park on the street without blocking traffic).  Friday, when I attempted to navigate that street, it was insane!  I was driving so slow I could have walked faster.  Literally!  Even though there were a few traffic jams I managed to get through without hitting anything or anyone hitting me.

By the way, in case anyone cares, it was reported that George Lucas would be at the Grand Prix.  And, before anyone asks, no, I haven’t seen him.  But he did get his picture in the Gulf Daily News.

There’s all kinds of other events associated with the race.  There’s a lot of parties, both private and for the public.  There’s concerts and performers–like jugglers and stilt walkers on tall bicycles.  Race attendees will also get a chance to drive a Formula One car at a simulator.  Some schools and three universities–Bahrain University, the University College of Bahrain, and Gulf University–are giving their students Sunday off so they can attend the race.  The newspaper said that Bahrain University was expecting a lot of students to attend the race anyway.  Other schools will still have class but will let out early.

The Bahrain International Circuit is expecting tickets to sell out.  The Grand Prix in 2007 was sold out, and they are expecting the same thing this time.  By the end of Thursday, 90% of the tickets had been sold.  In case you were wondering I did not go to any events.  I did not want to deal with all the crowds and all the expensive prices that the various thieves vendors would be charging.  I’m not that into racing anyway.  I just mentioned it here because it’s such a huge event here.  Most of this information has come from the newspaper.

Maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll be able to post information on the results of the race.  I’ll get that from the newspaper too.  Of course anyone who wants to beat me to it could probably look it up online.

Happy racing!