Typical Day

Hello All

Today was quite typical, woke up at 5:30, made breakfast, eggs, bacon, hash browns, juice, and coffee. Quite tasty! Showed up at work at 7:30, started training at 7:45-9:45, took a half hour break, back to training for another two hours, called it a day. Drove straight to Tower Links for a round of golf. Today it was 97 degrees with 50% humidity. Towerlinks.com Zipped through the course in about 2 1/2 hours. My sand game is getting better! I am beginning to read the greens better and learning how to manage the course. from the tips the course measures 7200 yards. I play the whites, enough for me. The course was built on a mangrove swamp and the mangrove comes into play on nearly every hole. Enough said. I talked to the manager today and he said he would give me a deal if I can get a foursome together for a week of golf. Let me know if you are interested by e-mail.

Finished my round and took a shower in the locker, mandatory here! While driving back to the apartment stopped at the local grocery store and picked up a few things. I had quite a few thing to bring up to the apartment so I asked one of the Indian boys that work here to help me with my things. I had spoken to this young man earlier about cleaning my apartment on a weekly basis and we sealed the deal. He will thouroughly clean my apartment for $13.62 a week! Because of the sand and dust your car gets dirty very quickly. I have another boy that washes my car every other day for$32 a month. he washes the car in the morning before I go towork. Saves me time and is worth it. Everybody calls you sir and makes you feel like a VIP. My cleaning boy just arrived! This is so cool!

A little insight to the culture, the Arab men are quite friendly, but the women are theirs and theirs alone. Women are held in high regard and protected. Threre are separate waiting rooms for women in all public facilities and they go to the front of the line. Muslim men can marry outside the religion but women cannot, go figure. I met a guy called Saddam and asked him some probing questions, interesting to say the least!

You would not believe how the upcoming election is so big here! Everybody I meet, once finding out I am American asks me who is going to win. I have not one person who favors McKain. Neither do I. I am here because of the Republicans. They screwed the air-traffic controllers and I decided to leave my job and family because of Bush and the Republicans. Albeit it was probally the best decision I have ever made. They do not care about the working man and never will. Big business, Big banks and recent history has told us where that has taken us. After all the bail outs has your interest rates gone down? McCain is Bush reincarnated. Vote Obama!

I will along with the rest of the world will await the results of the election.

To my NATCA brothers and sisters, ATC here is very different. All of you have spoken to pilots that have a hard time with English. Here everybody has! From fire trucks to all kinds of vechiles it is really bad! The Arab are bad, The Russian pilots are especially bad and they have to have interperters! The facility is non-radar right now. The FPLs routinely refuse traffic and holding is the norm. We own SFC-6500. MAP climbs to 6000. We can accept arrival at 7000 but thats it. Helicopters climb to the nearby mountains on resupply missions, effectively cutting off out airspace evert 10 minutes. Stripmarking is totally different. Frequencys cannot be combined but GC and LC, and APCH are, do not ask me why. Constantly jumping from one position to the other.

I have typing too long but I am sad to say I looked at the watch schedule and it looks like I will be here for the holidays. I kinda figured that. They have me for coverage which is a good indication how things are going.

Take Care
Mike