Working 9 to 5 . . .

So I officially have a job in my field! Yeah!

I am working for Gulf Holding Company as a Project Manager. GHC is a development company here in Bahrain, so I am the client - sweet - nice to be in charge. The project I am working on is called Al Areen Downtown. We are the developers of a parcel of land within a master development. The land will be developed with shops, retaurants, a hotel, apartments, villas, townhomes, a spa, a fitness center, mosque and school. We have started construction of the first phase and have started the design on the 2nd and 3rd phases, so I get to see both processes, which is great. I really enjoy what I am doing.

My company is pretty much a mini UN of different nationalities. My boss is from South Africa, and the Senior Project Manager who is basically training me is a Brit. My boss' boss is Kuwaiti. The VP of operations is a woman from Jordan. We have people from Bahrain, Lebanon, India and Pakistan and all over south-east Asia.

So, a few things that are funny about work. First off, because Bahrain used to be a British protectorate, so everything in English is spelled the British way. I have already been corrected on my spelling, "''Color' should be spelled 'c-o-l-o-u-r' in your report."

There are also a lot of construction terms that are different. My favorite one for this week was punch list. This is the list the Architect makes of all of the things that need to be fixed before they will accept a building. So, when my boss kept talking about the "snag list", I had no clue what he was referring to.

They other thing that is weird is that all of the offices I have been in have a butler. It is this guy that brings you water, coffee and tea all day long. You can have European or Arabic coffee or tea. He will also take your lunch in the morning, and if it needs to be heated, will bring it to you at lunch time when you call. It is very weird. There are also no water coolers because you can get water from the butler.

The Master Developer of the project (the company we bought our land from) had the coolest set up -they actually have a Costa coffee kiosk in their office. So, when you are in a meeting and the butler asks what you would like, you can totally say "I would like a double shot, non-fat, non-caf, vanilla, no foam cappuccino" and you could get it. I say could, because everyone else is ordering stuff too, so something that complicated will probably come back wrong. Since our last meeting was in the afternoon, my co-worker recommended a hot chocolate - yummy.