Fighting the brave battle
We've been pestered lately on the compound by an insane amount of flies. Specifically the harmless housefly and unfortunately, mosquitos. I am one of the lucky few that the mosquitos not only love, but look at as a feast. They come to me as if I was the last source of blood on earth, and leave me with beautiful bumps that scream for some scratchy scratchy. This has made me so paranoid that I can hardly sleep. And when I sleep, I dream about being bitten by mosquitos.
So I went to a pharmacy here in Jeddah hunting for some cream or spray to relieve the itching or repel the thirsty creatures. Once there I was offered two options; a spray that repels for 20 riyals and a cream for healing for 10 riyals. The cheapskate me (and due to my suspicion of such repel sprays) I went for the cream. A couple of nights later I was going crazy from all the itching and decided to try out the cream. Just to be safe, I read the accompanying leaflet to find out about the side effects. It only listed one (actually, it referred to the side effect as "undesirable", which side effect isn't?): itching!! Talk about a no-win situation...

Labels: day2day, english, Saudi-Arabia

as written by Tobbi G. at 11:34 PM GMT

Blues
They call it winter blues, or winter depression. A mood disorder otherwise known as seasonal affective disorder - or, more brilliantly, SAD. I'll leave it up to you, beloved reader, to read more about it on various websites but if anyone is looking for a cure, there are special light therapy lamps that help battle the accompanying mood troubles.
...
And so it was, a couple of weeks ago, I went on vacation to Iceland. Yup, first time I ever went to Iceland for a vacation. And how great it was. I met up with a ton of family and friends, ate a shameful amount of food and cursed the crisis. A normal day in the life of an Icelandic person. I find it hard to describe the visit to my country as it blends together a bit. We did try to do some shopping but unfortunately the prices in that bloody country have just risen too high. Even with American dollars under the belt.
Flor had left Jeddah a week before me as she was doing the bi-weekly rosters for the cabin crew and chose to use the chance to do them in Brussels where we have a small outstation. A friend of hers is working over there, one who we met in Brussels back in November, and Flor could stay with her there. This also allowed her to jump over to Paris for a weekend to meet another Argentinean friend who is working there. I traveled up to Iceland alone but as luck would have it, my flight from Brussels to London was delayed so I missed the Icelandair flight home. I therefore had to spend one night a the Renaissance close by Heathrow which, incidentally, was smack full that night due to three weddings. Not a quiet night. As I had worked quite a bit in the week leading up to it I was absolutely dead which could mean only one thing. Oversleeping. Add to that some confusion in my head about the time difference so when I finally woke up I was certain I had missed the flight. I rushed to the airport and found out that check in had closed. I pleaded with the lady to let me check in who reluctantly agreed after the sobbing story of mine that I had been away from my beloved country this long. As the economy seats had filled up during check in she was forced to put me in business class. I didn't complain but she felt compelled to let me know I didn't really deserve it since I was this late.
As mentioned before, the trip was made up of events of eating. I can't even imagine how much I ate, all I know is that I added some kilos to my belly. I did also manage to hit the gym a couple of times and go for two runs or so - more to enjoy that part of my old life there than to actually exercise. I spent a couple of days in the studio, updating the computers there and catching up with the arty people. Met up with most of my friends and the major part of the immediate family. Took a quick trip to the movies, to see Inglorious Basterds - a movie my father, my brother and me enjoyed quite a lot while Flor was hindered to enjoy it as much due to Icelandic subtitles and foreign spoken languages. She did get a nice nap out of it though! The one thing I couldn't do was take a quick drive in my old car, a dearly missed friend.
Towards the end of the trip I was lucky enough to get a couple of shifts covered so I could add two days to the trip. Much needed although it meant I had to travel again through Heathrow (horrible airport now a days), wait there some 8 hours and finally travel on Saudi Airlines in monkey class for the nearly 7 hour flight down to Jeddah. Added to that I was homesick as soon as the aircraft took off from Iceland. Can't wait to go again, whenever that may be.
...
As for SAD, I wish there were lamps that brought on a little bit of SAD when desired. Call it a mix of being homesick and a masochist.

Labels: day2day, english, Jeddah, Saudi-Arabia, travel

as written by Tobbi G. at 12:19 AM GMT

Finally here
Well, we have finally arrived to Jeddah after a hectic few days. Last wednesday, on 27th of May, I worked my last day at Tango. Hopefully not the last day forever, but for now it was. I was rather sad to leave as I made some great connections and felt very comfortable there even after only a short few months. It was a great experience to work there and I learnt a lot. Both in terms of the subject at hand and about myself.
After leaving Tango I met Flor on the train so we could both go all the way to the airport to pick up a rental car. We needed a car to finish up a lot of stuff, both in Barcelona and to drop off some stuff in storage in Madrid. We had booked the car the day prior at some low budget rental. They weren't at the airport itself but in a rather run down neighbourhood close by. Once at the rental we handed over the credit card. That is where our problems began. Turns out they didn't accept American Express. Urgghhh. After arguing with them for nearly an hour, with no success, we headed back out to the airport and started going between rentals there to find the best price. At the same time we were going crazy as we were missing an important Barcelona game. Once we had all the quotes in hand we headed to the airport bar and watched the second half of the game. Not quite what we had planned but the best we could do. After the game we headed to Avis and reluctantly paid almost double the price we had originally planned to pay the low budget rental. In the end, I wasn't too miffed though as we were forced to take a bigger car (the only one available) which was a huge advantage once we had packed all our stuff together.
We drove back to the apartment and starting packing like crazy people (well, Flor did, as usual I was my lazy self). Our plan was to drive off to Madrid in the afternoon of Thursday, 28th of May, just after picking up some jeans of mine from the tailer (yes, I have abnormally short feet for a man of my size). Unfortunately we did not make it to the tailor before closing, we were only about four minutes late! We had also planned for some people to come over on Saturday evening to pick up stuff we were trying to sell but since we were delayed into Madrid we had to call everyone up and ask them to come Friday morning before we'd go to Madrid.
Finally on Friday morning, after waking up way too early we sold off almost everything except our beloved sofa and semi-functional TV, picked up the jeans and drove off to Madrid. A six hour drive ahead with a car literally stuffed full of stuff (it is amazing how much one can accumulate in a very short time). We stayed with Flor's sister once there, saw her nephew play some football and had great food. On Saturday afternoon we then drove off back to Barcelona. 12 hours in the car in less than 48 hours. The drive back went well and amazingly, we managed it all without the use of a GPS.
Once back in the apartment we finished packing up our suitcases, had some dinner and crashed for the long day ahead of us.
On Sunday morning we woke up on time, carried our suitcases to our car and with tears in our eyes said goodbye to our home in Sabadell. I have to admit, it was hard to leave. We were carrying a lot of luggage so the worry was that we'd be charged quite a lot for overweight. Once we dropped off the rental car, we put on our sad and poor faces and proceeded to beg and plead at the check in desk to avoid the excess baggage charge. Sure enough, after some of the troubles in the days prior, we struck luck. One of the girls at the check in desk had once worked as a cabin attendant in Saudi Arabia and fully understood the need to carry all that stuff. So, nice as they were, they let us through with all the stuff. We were leaving Barcelona.
We landed in Brussels a few hours later and got ourselves to the Hilton hotel where the crews normally stay. We had about 8 hours to go until the transport to the Cargo area at the Ostend airport (quite far from Brussels) so we stored our luggage and enjoyed a nice meal at the Hilton restaurant. The hours couldn't pass quickly enough however. Hanging out in a hotel lobby for that amount of time simply ain't nice.
After the long drive to Ostend we got onto the biiiiig 747-400 freighter in the most comfortable seats I've ever used on a flight. We had about 10 hours ahead of us in that aircraft so it was very welcome to be dead tired after the hassles and rush in the past days.
Early morning on Monday we finally arrived here in Jeddah, "ready" to start the next chapter.

Labels: day2day, Saudi-Arabia, travel, work

as written by Tobbi G. at 3:05 PM GMT