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.

Puppies!!

So, many of you know that we got puppies!! That is right, two ridiculously cute and slightly naughty pups.
Our friends at the embassy rescued a litter that was on the side of a road in Manama. They cleaned them up, took them to the vet for their first round of shots and then took them in until they all found happy homes.
It was pretty easy to know which ones we were taking since these two picked us - well, actually, they picked out laps to sleep when we first met them.


We had some great name suggestions from everyone - Cheech and Chong, The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeffrine, Peaches and Herb, Mac and Manco,

Woodward and Bernstein....even Courtney's cat Zoe had suggestions - we liked Zoe Jr. and Zoe III. In the end, we settled on George and Gracie. We have taken Dad's suggestion of the kennel names "Salah al-Din Yusif - Urchin's Iced Carmel Macchiato" for George and "Shajar ad-Durr Sultana - Symarun's Red Hot Kisses" for Gracie under advisement, but since they are Bahraini mutts I don't think we are going to need them. They are pretty quick learners, although not necessarily good listeners.

They love their treats, so crate training them has been relatively easy because they will fly into their crates for a treat and happily gnaw on it as they are locked in for the night. Our next door neighbor's daughter comes over after school to let them out, so they aren't cooped up all day while we are at work.
They fight/play with each other a ton and are very funny about who had what toy. You can give them the same exact toys and one will look over at the other's and decide that one has to be better and take it. Not that different from human siblings! The vet thinks that they are somewhere between 3-1/2 and 4 months right now. Looking on-line we think they are probably at least part Saluki - which is also called the "Arabian hound" or as our friend said "a greyhound with longer hair". They are very common here in Bahrain.

So, take a look at the newest members of the fam - we have their puppy pictures (above, probably at 6-8 weeks) and pictures we took today (below) - they are getting big!