My work has this tendency never to anounce the vacations until the last minute, and on the next few days I haven’t really kept things in mind. I’m staying during Eid just to relax, visit some family, watch some tv/anime, and ride. The one thing I have on my mind is projects and tasks for work that won’t get accomplished for a long time due to this long holiday.

6 days off is good, but if the government ceases to function then we can’t really do any work and that causes problems for us and others.

I think that my brain clock is just going to go off the deep end at this rate. I have another training session in Dubai and this time it is compressed and its going to take a lot of time. The bad part is that it is two shifts, morning and night but at least I get to have the afternoon to myself. At first I was running around to get my passport done since I wasn’t sure if it was going to be outside the Middle East but it turns out its going to be in Dubai for the time being.

I am going to be packing a for a few days and the most insane part is that there is so much work to do these days I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to manage both but I just have to. I’m going to take advantage of any time off to go see some movies which are going to be entertaining, I’m not going to leave any movie unseen.

Things have been insane for me for the past two weeks, work has just been getting more intense every day. I don’t think I have pushed this much to get information and to get work done. I have had to make a business plan for my department while working with the other departments, and its all about give and take while making sure the numbers can be reached. I think I’m jumping the gun on a few things and I am making a few mistakes, I’m getting hints but I am left to make my own mistakes. I’m not a 100% sure of what I am doing but one thing is for sure, I am 100% behind what I am planning of doing and if I make a mistake I won’t repeat it. One thing is for sure I am learning a lot so I really do like that I know more then I did the day before, and whenever its a learning experience thats a great thing, but there just isn’t enough time in the day. I have been spending hours upon hours at work forgetting to eat anything, there was one day which I felt dizzy towards 3 pm and I realized that I just felt that I didn’t have any energy and the last thing I ate was a sandwich at 6pm the day before so I got a Starbucks frapaccino which really gave me some energy to keep going. I have deadlines to submit paperwork while checking on a lot of other work and making sure things go smoothly while helping a few new hires get on their feet. Its just been hectic from one thing to another, really trying to keep things together.

After work almost everyday there has been a milcha to go to, so I just go home around 6:00pm or 6:30pm shower and change then head back out. I go the milchas early for parking and if its a good friend I stay for the whole time. Recently it has been a lot of people that I know so I stay the whole time and I don’t leave until 9:30pm or 10:00pm the only funny thing about this type of days is that I don’t get a chance to eat until the milcha itself. So the first hour we would talk to all the people we know then we would all migrate to the Shawarma stands, and there have been some really good shawarmas! So from these events I have come to the conclusion that Lenotre has the best beef Shawarma and the Sheraton has the best Chicken Shawarma! I can’t wait to relax this weekend, I just want to play Halo 3.

I don’t know why but I really do hate office phones and I came to the realization recently. I had to move offices recently and in my new office I didn’t have an office phone for over two weeks and I found that to be very relaxing, I really didn’t want a phone and I was enjoying the ability to get work done without something going off. Whoever needs me can find me on my cell phone, then they installed the phone from somewhere else in the company and gave me a number.

At that point I realized how much I hate office phones, and here are a few reasons:

• The phones are so damn ugly with no ergonomics what so ever.
• These phones get dirty so quickly and for some reason it doesn’t seem clean no matter what you do.
• The phones with LCD screens have the weirdest abbreviations for the functions which leaves me clueless of what the hell it might do.
• How many buttons does it take to reach the voice mail and the command rational for deleting makes no sense.
• I don’t use 90% of the features that the phone has, its nearly impossible to even do something simple such as storing a name in a phone or something of that nature. The simple tasks are made so difficult that you want to smash your phone.

Just like Office Space I want to take a bat to my phone. I hate office phones!

I have managed to go the movies over the past couple of days but it has been insane the amount of meetings I have been going to. I start early morning around 8am and finish around 9pm for three days in a row. There have been a few breaks in between the meetings but still its exhausting. By the time the day is done I just go to my hotel room and want to pass out, one day I just went to Mall of the Emirates because I wanted to pick up a few things before leaving but still it was an exhausting trip.

There isn’t enough time to even surf the net I’m so tired, I just want to go to bed after getting back to the room and the traffic in Dubai exhausts you even more at the end of the day. There was one day where I almost fell asleep while taking a shower because it felt so relaxing. I’m happy to be home and in my own bed.

This has been the most impromptu trip that I have been on yet. I have had to prepare a lot of paper work for this trip, and I have been reading through pages and pages of specifications and requirements. I have been highliting points just to make sure I’m on top of my game, but I know 100% that I am forgetting a lot and I hope I don’t!

This is what happened, I was running around finishing up some projects and tying up the last loose ends issues some papers to the customer. Then at 1pm I was notified that I will be traveling this weekend to Dubai for work for some very important meetings over a 4 day period and I have to be there. I was slightly shocked that I had to go and so early, I’m not the biggest fan of Dubai because of how expensive it is and the amount of traffic. I have to do a lot of preparation for this meeting, so at least I have some time to prepare but I will be going to a few movies and maybe checking out The Kingdom for sure. Four days is a long time to spend in Dubai, but I have to meet with a team to prepare as well not just by myself. Too bad I can’t just go in for one day and and leave at night, that is what I have done for meetings like that before.

I had to go get some cash for the travel and change it at the exchange, the I had a few people to visit while in Kuwait before I leave. This is going to be a hectic trip for sure, and I really wanted to ride this weekend, too bad I can’t take my bike with me. Now that would be interesting riding in Dubai, or just in the Emirates.

Any recommendations of places to go after work? I’m going to Emirates Mall for the theater and Borders, and maybe picking up a few other things. But other then that I don’t have too many places in mind. I will be going to Emirates Towers to go eat the steak house there, and someone was telling me about the meat factory which I still need to go to. Is there anything that shouldn’t be missed?

Trying to start a business in Kuwait is a real test of patience, I have been going through this for some time now. The problem arises when you run into a problem between government entities. We have been waiting for over two months for one letter to go between them and they have said they lost it. Its really frustrating because its slowing our work, and just costing us more for no reason. 90% of all people working in the government sector are useless, and the other 10% are the ones keeping things functional.

When you want to do things the legitimately the government makes it as difficult as possible for young people to work on their own business. Its really sad that the state of things in Kuwait is like that. And to say that some of them are dirty its an understatement. Sometimes I want to take a bat to these guy’s heads because they just don’t follow any procedure and all of them are lacking manners.

They don’t provide you with clear ways to get things done, so you have to find an office or maktab to help you with the paper work. And if something goes wrong, which it will, they take their time fixing things, and since its Ramadan they go to work less times in the week then usual so it ends up that no one is there when you have a question and nobody wants to answer any questions.

Time has shifted with the new holiday, so now its Friday & Saturday for the weekend. I’m just very happy now that I get two full days for the weekend, the amount of work during the week hasn’t let up so having two days to recoup gives me a chance to come in fresh to work.

Changes from the Weekend Shift:

• My Day for the guys to meet up has shifted from Wednesday to Thursday.
• All Dewaneyas from Saturday have now shifted to Wednesday which is an interesting shift, they are all going to Wednesday.
• I get to sleep in two days, I still don’t believe it.
• I get to ride two full days, not just one. I just need it to cool off a little more.

I managed to check my work email for most of my trip but for the last week I decided to just not check and enjoy the time off. And when I came into work, I knew I would be paying for it. I noticed 1 of 213 emails to be downloaded, and it was a long morning. I went through most of the emails and I only replied about 10 % to 15% of them. So much work could pile up just in a week of not checking the email.

First thing I did was check the ones that were organized into specific folders and I was happy at least 50 of those 213 were spam so that was easy to get rid of. Then I had a little bit to catch up with work, the rest of the day was insane just running around and making sure I get back on top of all the projects I was previously working on. At that point I knew this is going to be a rough couple of weeks.

My friend told me there is never a good time to take off work, but somehow even though I planned this for a few months ahead it did turn out to be the worst possible time to take-off but I had plans and I had to go off!

Saturday was one hell of a day at work, I didn’t expect it to knock me out like that from the beginning of the week. There was a lot of work, and even more work to do for the rest of the week. Its is going to be exhausting for sure, preparing solutions, designing the right setup, presenting, meeting with idiots, and a lot of other things.

I came home after work at around 6:30pm and had a late lunch. At around 7:20pm I fell asleep in the basement only to wake up at 9:33 pm to transfer upstairs to my bedroom. I felt really tired and I had to drag myself out of the basement up to my room, and I had a lot I wanted to do this Saturday night but exhaustion got to me before I could even get up. It seems I’m really going to have to organize myself for this week to have any time to do anything after work.