Rich left the day before yesterday and Natalia will leave tomorrow. Rich is the classic, all American good guy. Natalia is from Indonesia and I’ll miss her. She’s the first female muslim that I have had a chance to really talk to. She’s also very liberal, but very serious about her religion. In short, she’s very impressive and a lot of fun to talk to. Have fun studying in Australia Nat! Hopefully the new people will be as cool…
I’m sorry, but this sort of thing becomes very important if you are here for a while. FInding good food becomes a bit of an obsession here. I wondered if there is a correlation between when I get pissed about living here and when I’m hungry. I get hungry a lot here, every place worth going to is a ways away… Went to an Ethiopian place last night. Wasn’t impressed. Granted, this wasn’t exactly a 5 star resturant, but my first impressions of Ethiopian aren’t too good. I went to the place across from citymax today. The Indian place is towards the end of sharia Baghdad, go a little farther and you hit sharia siteen. You can see this place pretty easily once you hit siteen. Anyway, it’s a burger/pizza place. The pizza was typical cafeteria quality. One warning, the “beef” they put on the pizza looks (and tastes) like slices of hot dogs. Next time I’ll get the veggie one… Their ice cream is pretty good, I had their cherry. It was actually vanilla with a swirl of merichino cherry stuff in it. The pizza wasn’t nearly as good as pizziola’s, but it was about half the price… It’s nice to have another option.
I went searching for my vacuum tubes again. I had hoped that there would be a stash of them here that I could get for cheap. I’m running into the problem that when vacuum tubes were king, Yemen was still in the stone age. By the time they started to use electronics, the tube era was long past. Still, the Brits were here for ages, and south Yemen was allied with the the Soviet Union, so I’m holding out hope… Anyway, the last time I went looking, someone told me to go look down Zubayairi street. so I went there. I started to ask around and someone told me that a place on the other end of Zubairi might have them. Back to Bab-Al-Yemen to go searching… I wandered around, showing people the picture I have. Most had no idea what it was, but several pointed me towards a street. I wandered up and down the street, no one seemed to have any idea of what I was looking for. Oh well, lots of exercise, maybe down in Aden there might be some… hmmm.
I did manage to find where the “taxis” for longer trips are. They have these rows of cars waiting, each row is to a specific destination. The cars are a mid sized one, and the squeeze 6 or 7 into them. I don’t think I’d be too keen on an 11 hour drive down to Aden in one of those. A little too “cozy” for my tastes. Still, it’s good to know, maybe I can take a cheap trip down to Taizz one of these days.
I’m sure that the meeting of Yemen’s president with the president of the US was front page news just like it was here, right?:-) Bush is being a big cheerleader for Salah, why not really. He’s at least saying the right things. Just to give you an example of how different the politics are here, there was a big story in today’s Yemen Observer about Salah exhorting religious scholars to denounce the rebels in the north. He said that it is everyone’s religious duty to keep the country together… Umm yeah, whatever…
I had always wondered why I see so many Philipino women here. It seemed strange that labor would need to be imported with so much unemployment here. I got to talk to one today as we were waiting for the travel agent to open. She tells me that the job availability is about the same here as it is there, but they get paid slightly more here! I keep forgetting that there are places that are much worse off than Yemen. People keep coming here by the hundreds from Somalia. The only answers I can come up with as to why Philipinos can get work here are training and they don’t have to wear a veil. It’s sad to think that Yemenis don’t have the skills to work a counter at a bowling alley, a travel agent, or in a hotel, but I am now coming around to believing it.
When I volunteered at a prison in Arlington, one of the things we were supposed to emphasize was basic job skills like dressing up for an interview, showing up on time, not leaving early, etc. It shocked me to think that someone didn’t know these things, but they didn’t. I have talked to several (western) owners of businesses here and they no longer hire Yemenis. The frequent complaints were people not coming in on time (or at all), disappearing for hours, Quat chewing on the job, and a general lack of people skills. I think it’s unfair to label an entire country’s population with undesirable work related skills, but these owners had had enough. I have certainly seen a lack of service skills across many different businesses. These Philipino women apparently bring the employers the skills that they need, like making the customer happy. The other possibility is that some employers prefer to have women that you can look at without veils or hijabs. Maybe they feel that seeing an actual woman could improve sales. It might.
Economists refer to the skill sets of people as “human capital”, and it is, by far, the most valuable and most flexible of all of the types of capital out there. Yemen certainly needs foreign investment here, but without the necessary human capital, not much will be accomplished. Hmmm, maybe that’s a decent business opportunity for me…:-)
Picked up my tickets for China today. Round trip was $795, not bad eh? This is the first time I have gotten an electronic ticket with an airline, they just aren’t as satisfying as a real paper ticket is. Oh well, as long as it works:-) China here I come!
My friend Luca has one of the most popular blogs in Italy. He studied here (among other places) for a while. A really interesting guy, and nice, have I mentioned that he wants me to come visit him in Italy? One day Luca, one day… http://www.intransito.biz/blog/
Rich is leaving tomorrow, but he’s a fellow American here at Cales. You can read about his adventures here. www.richinyemen.blogspot.com. I’l continue the American in Yemen blogging in your absence!:-)