Of course, it helps that the office here was busy and I managed to get quite a few things sorted, as well as start getting stuck into proper work. So it's been a good day, and I am still finding it rather nice to be able to have a good swim afterwards. This was followed by dinner (all prepared for me :-) then a free evening to flip through the John Lewis magazine that Barry-the-petrophysicist gave me, write this blog and watch Al-Jazeera.
The rest of my weekend was spent being very lazy, lying by or swimming in the pool all morning, reading, followed by some computer-based catch-up. So many more things to do, but it's nice to finally have time to do them (sorting photos on computer, updating friends' addresses, etc etc). Then yesterday evening I went along to the Oasis Club, which is owned by the British Embassy and usually quite hard to get into.
On Thursday an email had gone round from the Tripoli Players, the amateur dramatics society here which was organising the next pantomime (to be played in November). So I went along to the kick-off meeting, hoping to meet a bunch of people and with vague plans to offer my violin playing for the panto. I somehow ended up signing up for some acting...?!?!?! I have never acted in my whole life!! But somehow I thought this would be a great opportunity to give it a go. I'm sure I'd make a good chicken...anyway, watch this space!
Oh yes, and I now also have a driver :-) which is a concept that is surprisingly easy to get used to! "So I'll just give my driver a call..." Well it is rather useful as I am staying 10 mins away so need someone to drive me to work, and I also asked him to take me to Oasis. Only problem was, it was at the end of a day of fasting and he didn't know where it was, so had to phone someone then we got lost a few times as he was a bit tired and very hungry! (and craving caffeine and nicotine apparently!)
Moktar the driver is a nice little chap though. He reminds me of a friendly excitable ferret, talking at high speed about his time in Norwich and the merits of Libyan fruit. He likes to say yes a lot and giggles almost permanently. Which is rather nice as I can ask him about Tripoli and Libya and Ramadan and he is quite happy to answer any question. A grumpy driver would have been pretty awful.
The local staff at the office are struggling a bit with Ramadan. As it is so early this year, they have to stop eating and drinking at 5am and can only start again at 7.30pm. In this heat it is pretty tough, and I am not sure how the crews out in the desert can cope. For anyone working in a western company it makes for a pretty tough day and locals tend to arrive later and leave earlier than usual. For anyone else, and this must be the only Muslim country that does this, daytime is the time for sleep and everyone lives at night. Which is a little odd and means that shops open around 10pm and close around 3-4am, and apparently builders and plumbers are given to turning up on people's doorsteps at midnight to fix whatever is broken!
Well that's it for now, time for bed as I need all the mental power I can get at the moment, trying to jump into the projects at work and absorb lots of geological information and be able to use it very soon.
One thing remains: Happy 90th Birthday Grandmother!! I hope you had a lovely day :-)
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