Life in Khartoum - random snippets

Well, it seems my blog has been suffering from neglect. I just rarely find the time to write something that I think people would want to read. I was originally just intending to use this as a vacation blog, but since I haven’t had a vacation in a while (not counting a month back home in Canada), I haven’t had much reason to write. But I’ve been asked to provide a few stories of life in Khartoum, so here are a few anecdotes:

- the driving here is horrendous. People with no regard for road rules, and the bizarre contradiction that everyone seems to drive around like they are 30 minutes late for their wedding, but yet everyone seems so laid back and inefficient. I can almost guarantee that the guy at the phone company/government office/internet provider probably tried to sideswipe me because they were in such a hurry to get to the office, but if I want service this week, they seem to be in no hurry at all. Can't figure this out.

- Fortunately, I just moved into a flat attached to the office, so Idon't have to deal with the crazy morning traffic commute. Makes my life much better. And I have internet at home now so I can do things like catch up on personal email at 11 when I can't fall asleep rightaway.

- the heat is almost manageable again (down to the high 30s some days, low 40s in others). It’s really unbearable here for the better part of 3 months, but fortunately I have AC at home and in the office. And the rest of the year it’s quite nice, with not a hint of that minus 20 nonsense we get in Toronto.

- Me and my expatriate co workers derive constant amusement from the language mistakes that are made. Most of you have heard me tell of Malawi, where they mixed up l’s and r’s quite frequently, resulting in a headline in the national newspaper “General Erections to be held across the country on May 18th”. Now, nothing that funny has come up yet in Sudan, but the other day I got a list of our staff from HR, and it seems they didn’t know that the abbreviation for assistant is ASST. So, I was looking at our list of ass. Mechanics and wondering why we had so many proctologists on staff

Ok, that’s enough for now. I’ve got to give a shout out to my best friends Dave and Colin, who gave me the fantastic banner (pictured above my desk) for my birthday (you get extra friend points if you pick up the reference)

Random Facts about Me

So, it seems I’ve been meme’d. I don’t actually know what that means, but I assume it is blogger lingo for telling me I’ve been asked to do something. On my friend Lisa’s blog (http://lisatheknitter.wordpress.com/) there is a post of 7 random facts about her, and a request for me and 6 other bloggers to do the same on our blogs. Now, I wasn’t going to post this since it didn’t really fit in with my blog theme, but I figured 1) I haven’t really posted anything in a while anyway, so I guess the theme wasn’t working, 2) I was too lazy to start up a separate blog for random musings, and 3) attractive women can talk me into just about anything.

Mom, you can probably not bother passing this one around to the grandfolks. I’ll try to write a proper update later. Anyhow, without further adieu, here are some obscure facts about me:

1) I can solve the Rubik’s magic puzzle in under 5 seconds. Not the cube, the puzzle. Never bothered with the cube cuz I only like puzzles with defined beginnings and endings.

2) I can name the last 50 Stanley Cup winners, and more useless sports trivia than I’d care to remember, and this is the reason why I feel compelled to memorize Scripture.

3) When I was 15, I narrowly missed out on an invitation to the math Olympics.

4) I don’t drink coffee or tea, don’t like vinegar (and thus, most condiments). I like cooked tomatoes and cheese but not raw tomatoes and cheese.

5) I actually derive enjoyment out of aspects of my accounting job like reconciling the books, making fun and functional spreadsheets, and finding obscure patterns.

6) You know that dream some people have where they show up to school in just their underwear? I have an occasional reoccurring fear that something like this actually happened to me at one point.

7) When I was finishing school, I lined up a series of investment banking interviews, before realizing that I had no interest in investment banking. This led to a rather amusing stream of interview events, including:
· Quoting a book in an investment banking interview that basically talked about what a miserable profession it was
· Miraculously getting a second interview with the above company, and deducing that I had little chance of advancement, proceeded to take advantage of the free alcohol and issuing an open challenge at pool
· When another interviewee called me to inform me that I was being passed on, I responded with “That’s ok. I’ll probably see you in a couple years, working for your competition, and making you regret your decision. How do you feel about that?”

Sadly. My efforts were all outdone by a friend in a similar position, who: in the middle of the interview, recommended that the interviewers chase down the previous interviewee (the top student in our class) instead of wasting their time on him; and juggled in another interview, and when asked why, said “I figure this is all one big dog and pony show, so why not?”


So, there you have it. I don’t know if anyone really reads this blog, so these facts may remain obscure. If you’re reading this and you have an active blog, let me know, so I can actually follow the rules of this ‘meme’, which are:

The rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. - DONE
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. - DONE
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. – NOT DONE (I don’t know 7 people who have active blogs)
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Have a good one!