So I'm back on New Zealand soil. Talking to my mate Julian today I realised I've just started my 6th year of living in New Zealand. What a blast it's been.

My flight back was good, I sat next to a cool Aussie guy who'd been travelling around the place for the last 2 years. When I told him some of my experiences in SA he was pretty amazed.

In Melbourne I got myself a PSP, I've been eying them off for ages but waiting until I could get a good deal on one. I managed to get the guy to basically throw in a free game (they don't come with any games standard) for the usual price, so that was pretty good. It's an amazing little machine, it'll make my life in SA when I return a little less boring.



I'm so glad to be back, it's just...

Due to major delays in the work here (nothing to do with me or Siemens) I'm being sent back home a few weeks early. They don't think anything is going to be ready for quite a while so there's no point having me here chewing up the hotel bill etc.
So, I'm flying out Friday night (Riyadh time, it's Wednesday afternoon here at the moment) and I'll be in Auckland Sunday afternoon.
I've had a great time here but I can't wait to get back home. I'm still coming back here in December.

Tim

Today was a good day, apart from the fact that I still feel quite crappy. It's not the flu or if it is it's a mild form, mostly I have a sore throat and funny feeling glands in my throat. It'll just be something silly that I picked up off the plane or from some smelly Arab!





(I'm just joking about the Smelly Arab bit, as am I below with some of my comments.)

I arrived at work with the news that we were going to MEET THE CUSTOMER. Of course this is what I've been dreading because of what I'd been told, the demands he'll make and the very technical questions he'll ask and expect on-the-stop answers to.



So 3 of us pile into Fuad's car (pronounced phward), the other person I'm with is Nuno. He's the other technical person that works for Siemens. He's Portuguese and quite a...

I made it into Saudi Arabia ok, I didn't get mugged or attaked or anything. They looked at me pretty sternly as I came through customs but they appeared to be doing that to everyone.

I'm dead tired, not having got much sleep on the plane over. It was the worst flight ever, my TV was on a crazy angle and it didn't even work properly. So I had 15 hours of really not much to do. My seat was for some reason really cramped and I was right up the front with all the screaming kids.



When I got into Dubai this morning I was picked up by one of the Juniper people here. He took me out to the Juniper office, but also gave me a bit of a tour on the way, pointing out all the various interesting landmarks around the place (of which there's lots)

It...

Hello!
This was posted from the Juniper Networks Office in United Arab Emirates! The office is situated in a place called "Internet City"

Don't have time to tell you anything else, flight was OK, I'll be here for a few hours before I fly to Saudi Arabia.

That is all.

Tim

I fly out of Canberra in a little over 5 hours.
Next post will be from the land of the camels!

Tim

Hello and here I am still in Canberra. I can see Parliament house here from my hotel room window, it’s just a shame that I didn’t bring a portable rocket launcher with me. Then I could wait until John Howard was walking up the steps and with one simple press of a button I could solve a lot of Australia’s problems! If only it was so easy.



Speaking of things that aren’t really very easy, I went to the Saudi Arabian Embassy today. I arrived at 9am on the dot only to be told that they don’t open until 10. Bugger. The taxi driver was nice enough to give me a lift down to the local shops where I sat for while and had a lovely sandwich and iced coffee in the local bakers, then went to the little Post Office/Video Store to post some keys I accidentally took with...

I am typing this update from a hotel room in Canberra.

Today it was all-stops-out, packed my bag in 3 hours and I'm off to Saudi.

Sarah was able to come home from work which was nice, she helped me with the few things that I needed to do (mostly running around here and there) and took me out to the airport.

I got a plane to Sydney, where I got to catchup with Mum and Bill for an hour while I waited for my connecting flight to Canberra.



I lot of my posts from now on are going to be marked private - I will be in Saudi and I don't wish anything I might want to say about my situation/work there to be made fully public. So if you want to read them you'll have to login, if you don't have an account or can't remember it, click...

I'm very happy, I passed my JNCIA-E exam today. This means I now have a JNCIA-M and a JNCIA-E certificate. I hope to extend that out with a few more (harder) certifications, in 6 months or so I'll sit the next one.

That's all!

Tim

Well we didn't do too much with our weekend, I guess there's no big surprise there though! Mostly it rained all weekend so that stopped any outdoor adventures. I still went to the SPCA on Saturday though, got very wet walking the dogs. They don't seem to mind the rain though!



Last night we rented a couple of movies, Hitch and The Extra. I'd already seen quite a bit of Hitch (it's not too bad) but I didn't think much of "The Extra" it dragged on too long.

I also hired a couple of cricket games for the PS2 and this afternoon we played Ricky Ponting Cricket 2005 for a couple of hours. Sarah kicked my arse in the last match! It's a lot of fun though, you really wouldn't think cricket would be transformable into a good computer game but it works quite well.



Daylight savings started today...