The Locals Are Revolting

The locals are a pretty smelly bunch of folks and I know this is a miserable part of the world as i have told you all so many times, but it still surprises me how depressed they must all be, as without doubt these people are the most suicidal race on the planet. The walk about totally oblivious to anything that moves faster than a speeding sheep, they walk on the road, probably as it doesn't have any snakes or spikey plants or sheep shite to squish through your old sandals with holes in the sole. So they walk about in the road and just walk across the road without looking in any direction, we have had to make emergency maneuvers nearly every day to avoid the local lunatics, if it wasn't for the fact we would have some serious paperwork to complete I would prefer to run them over and then we wouldn't have them running in front of us the following day. When you drive into the local villages you see a sign that says 50 and above is a picture of children, probably saying don't kill more than 50 today please.

well things are moving pretty quickly on site nowadays, we installed the engine, alot easier than the ones my Buddy Zac is trying to put in in Egypt, this is a like a starter motor for the huge frame engines but this is a piece of engineering perfection being an Aeroderivative and costs $5 million a pop, you can actually change these out in a day with a good team of non locals.

so enjoy the sight of some good ole high technology metalwork



Just me trying to look as though i am not freezing my ass off in the desert, yes it is sunny but still like the Antarctic

Two Worlds One Miserable Country

I am still shocked by how completely primitive this country can be, and how the country is in the midst of a revolution of the modern age, the average male here is a sheep herdsman, they spend all day moving sheep about in the desert hoping the sheep don't die as they try and find something green to eat, looking like they have come from the middle ages, they maybe even looked the same 2-3000 years ago, wrapped against the cold wind in headscarf and even a huge blanket type thing wrapping around them with just a small part of a well worn and hideously wrinkly face, they will sit about in the dirt even in town they sit in the dirt talking with other old guys who also sit in the dirt, wrapped in this filthy looking clothing, most houses here are a couple of block houses without running water and for sure no heating, so no showering in this winter climate, we have a young guy on site, about 20 years old or so and he smells like he has slept with the sheep, he obviously hasn't washed in months, maybe years, I was gagging when he was working in the control room, i couldn't go near him he was so pungent. Anyway the locals are just peasant farmers and have basically nothing other than a few mangy sheep, but the younger generation of school kids are exposed to the TV and other worldly influences and have puffy jackets and fake Nike trainers and fancy shaved heads with neatly clipped goatee beards and look like they came from London or New york, so how does this country cope with this culture shock, how will it cope over the next 20 years, i am not sure that the younger folks will tolerate herding sheep but what will they do in a country that is nothing but an extension to the Sahara desert, You see carts being pulled by Donkeys everywhere and especially at local builder merchants, as the donkeys are better suited to moving a few blocks about and they dont produce any CO2 only a pile of droppings which are good for the carrots. it makes me wonder if the end of the Petroleum era will make any changes here, Perhaps these people are perfectly suited to the non-car era

Great mode of Transport



Local Sheep Farmer, where I am it is more of a desert



Perhaps they are Happy living like this and I should respect them for their lifestyle and culture, but man i dont ever want to smell like a sheep farmer of Tunisia

Night Time Wildlife

We have just lately started staying later as the job is getting close to being finished, well I have just seen my first desert fox, it was a small little thing and was just caught in the glare of the headlights as it was crossing the road, but we could see it large ears, there are also lots of rabbits running about, and this was probably what the fax was after, anyway this morning as we went down the site road we saw a dead fox by the road, i was saddened by this, this place is a miserable place to live and survive and this little fox was out trying to find something to eat and was knocked down by a racing local lunatic probably, I hate modern society for this destruction of the world around us, but as i am part of it i can hardly complain

here is a picture of an alive fox

Funny Quote I Found

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference."

President Harry S. Truman

The Wife Sold The House While I Am Away Working

This may sound like a silly story but it is true, my wife fell out with the neighbours in our tiny condo and she told me she would like to move to a bigger condo with neighbours not so close, I agreed and two days later she had sold the house and I will be moving house when i get back, we are moving into rented property as i think prices are going to crash same as the USA, the prices are just crazy, almost the same as the USA was 12 months ago, the crash has got to get down here eventually and soon i hope, actually i am hoping to be moving to Australia with my job and taking the family with me sometime in the year and i can then wait until prices have reached rock bottom and buy a nice farm out in the country when i get back, Anyhow Jenny has found this crazy hippy house closer to the little girls school and it is basically a cluster of 10 houses with lots of gardens and fruit trees and it has a pool and a BBQ area so the little girl can run about all day and we can take her swimming and it is more private and the miserable shits of neighbours will not be able to see what we get up to and not get involved in our lives, the shape of the house is crazy, the main bedroom is like a ballroom with the bathroom in a corner, try not to laugh too much at the house but it is nice setting

the front of the house



The ugly kitchen



The Downstairs greenhouse area lookalike



The Corner Bath in the Corner Bathroom



The ballroom for a bedroom, we need lots of curtains



As you can see there are trees all around the house and Jenny says there are fruits on lots of the trees, i love playing in a wilderness, luckily we have a full time gardener, so no mowing the lawn for me, just playing at being the landed gentry,

Ugliest Obsessive Compulsive Habit I Have Ever Seen

When i flew into Tunisia i flew via Newark, my favourite airport in the USA as the international lounge has some great food places plus a great business lounge, so as normal when flying from Costa Rica to the USA the plane is full of US males, most of which are older flying alone and have been either looking for a Latina wife or some Latina love, maybe even Lationo love. So it wasn't unusual to find a middle aged man sitting across the aisle from me and this guy had the worst obsessive compulsive habit i have ever seen in public, He would drive his fingers well up his nose to try and pull out the hairs, not now and again but he would do this constantly, you could tell he didn't like doing it but he couldn't stop himself, he tried everything to stop thinking about it, like reading and talking to his female seat companion but he just couldn't stop trying to pull out his brains by the roots of his nose hairs, it looked crazy, if you have ever tried to get hold of an offending hair then it is pretty tricky and if you have then ever tried to pull a hair if you have managed to get your nails into it then it is pretty painful, but this guy was doing it non-stop for four and a half hours, his nostrils must have been sore at the end of the flight, It looked ugly and disgusting, i personally use a tiny pair of sewing scissors to cut my extra long nose hairs as i have a fetish about not letting anyone see hairs hanging out of my nose but to try and pull them out in public is the sign of a red-neck hill-billy who loves pigs, probably. If anyone else has seen a worse case of O/C disorder then let me know i would love to hear about it

Ugly disorder that needs a slap around the head

Winter Sunshine Almost Feels Like Summer

Here at the moment is a short spell of sunny weather, this is a relief as after i arrived back in Tunisia we had 1 week of solid miserable gray rainy very cold weather, we have even seen snow/rain mix and it was pretty miserable, i don't think i made it out of the trailer that day. So now after a few days of sunny but cool fresh weather we had a beer at the hotel as we left a little early on Sunday. So here are a few pics of what winter sun on the edge of the Sahara looks like, It could be worse I could be in Algeria with no beer.

Just relaxing by the icy water of the pool



The Area around the pool looks nice but it very badly finished off and the paths have never been swept since the place was built. but the mountains look good



This shows the pool and lion fountains but it isnt quite as nice as it looks, the beer was Ok though



On the work fron, things have never been as slow as this in any other job i have ever worked on, but it allows me to organise all my music and get the genres sorted, for the first time ever.

Forget To Mention Silly Fight at New Years Eve Party

I almost forgot to mention the fight i saw at the party in Tunis, at the place we had our party it was a sort of multi-roomed multi-function type of place and the small hovel was made into a restaurant and the big room was a night club i think, as i didn't venture into it, but when i went for a breath of fresh air into the lobby i saw the doors being manned by two very tall doormen, and they were letting in a small woman of 50 perhaps and what i thought to be a teenager who was crying holding onto her arm, it looked very strange, then another boy came in after her, she was very very upset, she was shouting at the top of her voice and waving her finger at the doormen, the boy was crying and the older son( I think )then took a swing at the big doormen and then all hell let loose, the mother was trying to slap everyone in the lobby, the older son was hiding behind a fire hose reel, the younger son then went ballistic and was jumping about trying to punch the doormen, the biggest doorment was being restrained by his buddies to stop him pummeling the whole family to death, but as the younger boy backed away from a beating he bumped up against me, as i was thoroughly entertained and not intent on missing any of the action, so as i saw the big doormen looming up against the younger guy, i put my elbow directly in the kids head to stop him moving any more and then the big guy was allowed 1 punch to the kid to get rid of his tension, he then slapped the older boy. As the silly old woman was flailing her arms about her headscarf kept flapping about like it was in a gale force wind, it was so funny as it kept covering her face so she couldn't see, and even as the fight was in full swing the older boy kept trying to keep the head scarf on her head, i was laughing my ass off at this, the boys got a limited slapping for being out of order, the old lady got thrown out while waving her arms about and trying to keep her head scarf on, and the big doormen was looking silly for letting a young boy catch him with a sucker punch, it was all over in 2 or 3 minutes but i was kept laughing for an hour or so afterwards. It just goes to show that the only woman in a head scarf who managed to get through the front door lasted less than 5 minutes and was thrown out like a peasant, so the lesson to be learnt is don't wear a head scarf.

Life Over the New Year In Tunisia

I arrived back in Tunisia on the 28th of December, missing a warm new year in Costa Rica, i was miserable for leaving a warm paradise ( I keep saying that don't I), and i have virtually no work to do while here, I am killing time doing odd jobs and sorting out my music collection, but we were invited to attend a new years eve party in tunis with the site lead and his girlfriend in Tunis, i jumped a tthe chance to get away from this place, only problem is the 5 hour drive and the expensive hotel and party but that is me being cheap again.

By the time we reached Tunis is was snowing and the ground was frosty and dangerous we were driving like lunatics to get there for the party, but we got there and went to a small restaurant and had some really incredibly crap food for the $50 a head it was costing, all cold and horrible tasting, a real disappointment, but the wine flowed and we danced and had a really good time, the pictures tell a story, this is a muslim country and I didn't see one headscarf in the place, quite developed then i would say.

I wasn't that drunk, honest, this is Sorin from Romania, a funny guy



My party mask



My drunken impression of Madonna or a impression of a drunken madonna



young love



Just a small place with some crazy foreigners



All in all it was an expensive night but a good one to kill the misery of being away from my family

Pictures of the Paradise I Left Behind

Since I arrived back in the cold of a Tunisian winter, I have been missing my paradise homeland and its permanent warm climate. I found a couple of pictures in my camera of the hotel we stayed at when i went back this rotation and it brought back memories of those warm days and nights. So many trees and so green compared to this barren sandy dusty miserable cold hell, thank Buddha my visa has come through for Australia, it is the only thing that keeps me going is the thought of getting my ass on the beach in Darwin, Northern territories

Hot Tub



Swimming Pool



Beautiful Sunset over the Pacific



Christmas party at home of my sister-in-law close to Panama border