No longer cranky! Got through the 35th B-day and am flying high again!
Should be headed to our permanent accommodations either tonight or
tomorrow night (only one month late). New guy should be arriving in a couple of hours, if we like him we'll name him, otherwise he's just plain old new guy for a while. Kay and I already made it through
our unofficial Christmas (we did it last night, no thanks to skype,
which decided not to work!) And while we still have the real night and
day to get through which could prove a little tough, things are
otherwise normalizing! Finally done with the Saudi Health commission,
licenses are on their way! Iquama's should be headed our way soon
after, sooner we get our Iquama's, the sooner we get entry/exit visas,
the sooner I can slip over to Bahrain and have a beer! Or over to Egypt to see some pyramids, or to Jordan to see...um...Jordan. One of the really cool things about being on this side of the world is the history and the architecture. When I think of US history it never occurs to me that everything is relatively new...I mean my minor's in history so of course I know it, it just doesn't really occur in a way that you think about it. It's a form of Americanization, we are so large with so many different regions to the country, and so many things to occupy our time that we often don't even think to look beyond our own nose.
Getting to work was hell today, getting home was even worse. Their is a GCC conference to discuss the Syria situation and so the diplomatic quarter was full of diplomats (imagine that), police, secret service, military etc...I'm sure it was still faster than DC would have been had the same thing been going on.
So again things are good, almost getting back to that day I'm so in love with...You know, Payday...We'll get through the non-existent Christmas and new Years Holidays and then start fresh in late January with a new semester of classes. Looks like were going to be teaching for a while, it was only supposed to be a stop gap measure, but apparently were doing such a good job that our real boss and all of his bosses think we're just where we need to be. Apparently we greatly impressed the ministry of education on their surprise visit the other day, enough that our department was given the overall high grade for the campus. so yeah, were not going anywhere for a while, looks like these 6 day weeks serving two masters and being generally despised by the rest of the incompetent local teachers are going to continue for a while...Oh wait...did that make sense? It didn't did it? I haven't told you about our two masters yet have I...Hmm that's a long story and one deserving of it's own post. I'll give you a teaser though, we were brought here to build a high performance EMS education program, we were hired at high salaries into the administration department of the college, we were competed for by multiple Universities all trying to do the same thing, when we got here, a lack of competent teachers and some recent firings left the department short handed, and men with Master's degrees and PhD's who felt teaching undergrad classes was below them, sneakily handed off their classes to us for a "short time" so that they could free up their schedules to goof around in their offices...I'm serious...All was going well until the other day when one of them asked me for some papers, to which I gave him a sideways look and said "no, why would I do that for you"? Apparently somewhere in the hierarchy this moron with a MS (Phramacy...think CMT in the US), is technically one of my superiors...or something like it. he doesn't know anything about what I do, doesn't help with what I do, didn't evaluate my resume/CV, didn't hire me, doesn't know anything about the way I conduct classes, but...yeah...huh?...what...You now understand it as much as I do. Either way, I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not work for him, that I was not here to do his job but rather to build a program that could rival a western program and that I was only actually teaching a class out of the goodness of my heart, in other words...I was as "diplomatic" as ever. We mentioned the whole thing to our real boss, who laughed, told us to be "diplomatic" (he meant it though), and play nice. Then we impressed the ministry so much, that they didn't even mention fat old Mr. Pharmacy or his helpers, just us. Yep, they hate us alright. I will continue this some day soon, and for all of you thinking about coming over, read it and understand it, for all of you who have tried to train people in the middle east before, stop laughing and remember the shock you had the first time you figured out that the guy who would be homeless in the states was the prince/emir/sheik/rich kid boss over here! And stop laughing dammit!
Getting to work was hell today, getting home was even worse. Their is a GCC conference to discuss the Syria situation and so the diplomatic quarter was full of diplomats (imagine that), police, secret service, military etc...I'm sure it was still faster than DC would have been had the same thing been going on.
So again things are good, almost getting back to that day I'm so in love with...You know, Payday...We'll get through the non-existent Christmas and new Years Holidays and then start fresh in late January with a new semester of classes. Looks like were going to be teaching for a while, it was only supposed to be a stop gap measure, but apparently were doing such a good job that our real boss and all of his bosses think we're just where we need to be. Apparently we greatly impressed the ministry of education on their surprise visit the other day, enough that our department was given the overall high grade for the campus. so yeah, were not going anywhere for a while, looks like these 6 day weeks serving two masters and being generally despised by the rest of the incompetent local teachers are going to continue for a while...Oh wait...did that make sense? It didn't did it? I haven't told you about our two masters yet have I...Hmm that's a long story and one deserving of it's own post. I'll give you a teaser though, we were brought here to build a high performance EMS education program, we were hired at high salaries into the administration department of the college, we were competed for by multiple Universities all trying to do the same thing, when we got here, a lack of competent teachers and some recent firings left the department short handed, and men with Master's degrees and PhD's who felt teaching undergrad classes was below them, sneakily handed off their classes to us for a "short time" so that they could free up their schedules to goof around in their offices...I'm serious...All was going well until the other day when one of them asked me for some papers, to which I gave him a sideways look and said "no, why would I do that for you"? Apparently somewhere in the hierarchy this moron with a MS (Phramacy...think CMT in the US), is technically one of my superiors...or something like it. he doesn't know anything about what I do, doesn't help with what I do, didn't evaluate my resume/CV, didn't hire me, doesn't know anything about the way I conduct classes, but...yeah...huh?...what...You now understand it as much as I do. Either way, I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not work for him, that I was not here to do his job but rather to build a program that could rival a western program and that I was only actually teaching a class out of the goodness of my heart, in other words...I was as "diplomatic" as ever. We mentioned the whole thing to our real boss, who laughed, told us to be "diplomatic" (he meant it though), and play nice. Then we impressed the ministry so much, that they didn't even mention fat old Mr. Pharmacy or his helpers, just us. Yep, they hate us alright. I will continue this some day soon, and for all of you thinking about coming over, read it and understand it, for all of you who have tried to train people in the middle east before, stop laughing and remember the shock you had the first time you figured out that the guy who would be homeless in the states was the prince/emir/sheik/rich kid boss over here! And stop laughing dammit!
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