Today is Sunday, and it is a pretty slow day. We took our usual trip to see the kitties. We took them outside on a fenced in patio. They enjoy all the smells outside, but Poppy was looking for some kind of escape route. I did some more trimming on Coco. It was a bit warm, so hopefully, they will have a shower there today. I took a video on the way to quarantine, so you can see what it looks like. We drove over to the Panaga Club for lunch and met up with some friends that we had dinner with the other night. They had been out playing tennis. They both look pretty hot. There are not inside tennis courts here. We went to the upstairs restaurant to have lunch thinking that it would be quiet and less kids, but after we had order our food, a group of about 18 kids (8 or 9 year olds) came in and sat at a long table next to us. Some much for a quiet lunch! We are going out to dinner with some friends for sushi tonight. Here are some photos that I have taken in the last few days. The sunset from two nights ago.....

Interesting art in one of the restaurants:

Christmas tree at Panaga. I think it's funny how muslim women will take photos by a Christmas tree.

Engrish

This is NOT part of Coco anymore...

The first photo is the sign indicating the name of the Quarantine Unit and the second is the sign on the outside of the building.

Some cool looking clouds....

An old house that reminded me of some of the houses in Louisiana from the 60s.

We had a nice dinner with some friends last night at a Thai Restaurant. I think the dish that Jim and I had contained a little MSG. I need to get a note card with "I cannot consume any MSG" in English, Malay and Chinese. Maybe that would get the point across. We slept in today and had a late breakfast at our favorite diner, Marilyn's. Marilyn's is named after the actor "Marilyn Monroe", which I think is hilarious! It is almost all western food. I eat there often enough that the ladies know me. We then went out to see the kitties. They are doing fine. Coco is still getting hot, even though I have trimmed him back some. I trim him a little each day. He really does not enjoy all the grooming. Monday will be two weeks that they have been in quarantine. Two more weeks to go..... We saw some monkeys on the side of the road today, just monkeying around. The workmen throw their trash on the side of the road, and the monkeys open it up and eat what they can and throw the rest on the roadside to blow around the road. We saw a couple of hornbills flying around, but could not get a photo of them. I took Jim by a house that I looked at the other day that is on the open market. Now, I am trying to convince Jim that we should take this house instead of waiting for 4-6 months for Shell to assign us a permanent house. I hate playing the dance around political game. I just want to move one time. Shell has assigned us a temporary house, but of course it is not ready yet. Usually, it takes about 2-3 weeks for them to get the house ready. Then, after we move into the temporary house, a month or so later, they will assign us a permanent house. The problem is that we don't have any idea of what that will be. This is the game that they play with new arrivals. Whee! We received our air shipment last night just before we left to go out. Jim has worked at getting his desktop computer set up today. Our bikes were also in the air shipment, which Jim will get to reassemble tomorrow.

Coco & a Dragonfly

Here is a link to Coco having a great time with a dragonfly. I love how when the dragonfly goes into the hallway, he goes out and gets it and brings it back into the bathroom. http://youtu.be/WLuVSwzduy8

Another busy day in paradise. Jim had to go to the office at 12 midnight for a teleconference with Production Technologist meeting that took place in The Netherlands. There is nothing like an hour meeting in the middle of your sleep schedule. Apparently this happens a lot here. He said that there were several people in the office at midnight. After bringing him to work at almost 9:30 this morning, Antje (my German friend) and I headed to the Shell Outpost office to pick up laundry, which we had washed there. Then, we went to the Panaga Club for a coffee morning. There was a small craft fair there, and too many people in such a small room. It was funny to watch the muslim women taking photos with the Christmas tree. We decided it was too noisy, so we headed out. We drove out to the Miri border to see the kitties. I have been a bit concerned with Coco the last few days. I noticed he was panting, which is unusual for him. However, the daytime highs have been pretty warm the last few days. We had a nice thunderstorm last night and it cooled things off a bit today. He was not panting today. I was concerned that he was upset about something. I was looking for someone to come and trim him, but I was not successful with that, so I am doing it myself. It is a slow process, as I don't want to upset him too much. Usually when I arrive at quarantine, I close the hall doors and let the cats roam around in the hall to give them some space. The enjoy that special time for exploring and adding more smells to their data bases. Coco is not too happy that I am using up some of his special time for grooming. It's time for lunch and we head back to the big town of Kuala Belait. We go to our usual spot Marilyn's for lunch. This is an interesting restaurant, as it is half indoors/outdoors, but not in the usual way. There is actually no door on the front of the place and depending where you sit, depends on how much a/c you get. It is mostly western type foods and the big thing is that they do not use Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). The grocery stores sell MSG by the kilograms! Antje and I are staying in the same hotel, so after lunch we have some down town. I pick up Jim from work about 4:30 PM. He says that Shell has notified him that they have assigned us a temporary house in the G section. We go by and have a look at it. Hmmmm..... people are still living in it, so that means it could be a few more weeks. Something else noteworthy on this is that I sent Jim a photo of Coco and had him show the photo to Shell Housing, letting them know that our two cats will be released sometime in the first week of December. Jim received a note back, saying that the housing people would discuss the matter and get back to us. Whee! The last few weeks we've been looking around at different types of cars. We finally decided to buy a new car versus a used one, and we decided on a Mazda CX5. There are only 3 new ones in Brunei at the moment. Two have been purchased, and the third one is in Bandar (2 hrs away). We paid a deposit so that the dealer will bring the last one to KB, so that we can drive it before we buy it. Hopefully, we can fit that in tomorrow.....

We landed in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei on November 2nd. It is definitely a culture shock coming from Qatar in some ways. Drivers are actually courteous here! It is rare to hear a horn beep. There is never any traffic to talk about. People are very laid back, and don't get excited or mad about anything. And it's GREEN here! We've spent these last two weeks doing all the paperwork that is need to get our Brunei Identify Card (IC) processed. Jim has a clean bill of health now, and has presented to Shell the necessary medical results. Now we have to wait for Shell to complete the preliminary paperwork with the government. Until we get the next piece of very important paper(s) we cannot go onto the next step of getting a local driving license. We have to have our driving license before we can purchase a car. We have picked out a Mazda to buy when we get the correct paperwork. We are living in a hotel/apartment in Kuala Belait (KB). It's not anywhere near as fancy as the hotel we stayed in when we were in Qatar, but it works.... well most of the time. It has a small mini kitchen, so I can still cook some meals. Some thing in this place, I just have to laugh about. The toilet for example did not flush so well when we first arrived, and Jim was going to "work" on it. While he was at work on day, I call the front desk about it and they sent the plumber. This indian guy shows up at the door, and I thought this should be interesting. He would work on the toilet for 10 minutes or so and have me come and check it. I would throw some paper in the toilet and show him that it was not fixed. I don't think he spoke a bit of English. Finally, he understood what I wanted. I think he adjusted the level in the tank for the toilet to flush properly. All of this took about an hour. Hey, no worries! It's just another adventure of life! We expect to be here for probably two months. Here are some photos I have taken around town. This is the control tower at the airport, which I took when we where waiting on the cats.

These were taken around KB town.

This is where you buy a ticket to put on your windshield for parking.

This is looking down the street in KB town. This is the main shopping area!

These little drainage canals line the streets.

A nice sunset on the river.

Getting our two cats, Poppy and Coco out of Qatar was also another challenge. We hired a pet relocation to take care of the paperwork. They stayed at Ms. Nicky's house for about two weeks in their luxury accommodation. The room had a king-sized bed with large windows. The room had an in-suite bathroom with large tub, for not bathing in. Because the accommodations were so elaborate, they didn't even know that they were going to be transported to another continent! On Sunday evening, 10 November 2013 they were transported to the airport to fly to Dubai, where they would spend a day. They still have not told me about their accommodations there, but I think if the truth be known, they stayed in a luxury hotel nearby the airport. The next morning they boarded Brunei Airways for their final destination. Monday evening, Jim and I met them at the airport Cargo section in Bandar, Brunei. They were both so happy to see us, but both had many questions. The pet relocator, Lido transported them to the quarantine facility just 10 minutes from the airport, where they would stay for the night. We fed them and tucked them in. Tuesday morning Lido picked them up from the Bandar facility and transported them to the quarantine facility at the other end of the Country near the Malaysia border. Meanwhile, as I was bring something to Jim at the Shell office in Seria, when I tried to start the car I discovered the battery was dead. We went into the transportation office at Shell to try to get another car while the mechanic was fixing this one. The man behind the desk needed some convincing and told me that he would have to call his supervisor. I said, "get him on the phone". I explained the situation to the supervisor, and he ok'd the release of another car, while ours was being repaired. Just as I was walking out of transportation, Lido calls to tell me that he is at the border quarantine unit. I told him that I was on my way. When I arrived about 30 minutes later, no one was upset or anything. They were all just sitting around chatting, while waiting for me to arrive. We got the cats all checked in and I got them settled into new home for the next month. They were both still a bit blurred eyed by the whole experience. They were ready for a good kitty nap with no interruptions. They seem to be happy with the new accommodation, but the space is kind of cramped after being in a two story villa. There are not stairs for Coco to chase Poppy up and down on. Coco wants to know when the A/C is going to be installed, while Poppy is very happy with only a screen between her and the great outdoors. Coco is definitely feeling like he is in prison. He's not sure how he winded up in the predicament, but what to do?

We've Landed Again....

We spent five weeks in America visiting family and friends from mid-September to mid-October. We visited Houston, Austin & San Antonio, Texas, New Orleans & Lafayette, Louisiana, Tampa & Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It was great fun to see so many people! We spent some good quality with Mike & Craig. We also helped celebrate Betty's (Jim's mom) 93rd Birthday in Austin. When we returned to Doha, we had two weeks to sell our Hummer trucks, and have the moving company pack our house, and get the cats ready to go. Everything worked out, but it was a lot of stress, especially the last week! Unfortunately, I was involved in an accident about three hours before the sale was going to take place. As I was traveling through an intersection, a woman ran a red light and his the back side of my truck. One or two more seconds and I would have made it through the intersection. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident. In the other car were two women dressed in abayas with only their eyes showing and a little boy about 8 years old. All were not wearing seat belts. Her car hit the tow hook on the back of my Hummer. This is what her car looked like:

Here is what my truck looked like:

Being Egyptian, she lied to the police, and told them her light was green. Because of that, the police wanted to wait for the photos to come back. Her husband come to the police station after the accident and managed to make the police chief mad within about 2 minutes. He was so mad he had to go into another room. He knew at that time that she was lying. About two days later, her husband tried to negotiate with me. He said that his wife would admit she was at fault if I would get 3 estimates and he would pay the cheapest one. Why would I do that!?? I waited until the Qatari that was buying my trucks to return from a business trip. He had already purchased them, and was waiting for the police report to transfer ownership. A Lebanese friend of mine was helping me communicate with the police, however in the week that the Qatari was gone, no decision was made. It was fun to watch how the underground in Qatar works. Within about 20 minutes, the Qatari and I walked out of the police station with a police report in hand. As all of this was going on behind the scenes of our packing up and trying to exit Qatar, you can see how it would have added a little stress to our lives. We were both very happy when we received our exit permits! Yes, you have to get permission to leave. We have heard many horror stories about people being detained in Qatar for some pretty dumb reasons.