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All posts for the month March, 2012

A simpler time

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 30, 2012
Posted in: General Ramblings, Randomness. Leave a comment

I just watched the movie “Convoy”.  It was rather campy but it was fun.  There were the classic elements of good guy being pursued by bad cop and the audience is drawn into cheering on the good guy.  Some jokes are tossed out there that today would be taboo but they are still funny if you realize that life doesn’t always have to be politically correct.  Once such line comes to mind when “Black Widow”, a black lady trucker takes a sharp turn too fast and dumps her truck on its side.  She is helped out of the truck and she yells at the truck and says, “Stupid White Truck, I knew I shoulda bought a black truck!”.  There is trucking manufacturing company by the name of “White” and they were the makers of her truck.  Her truck was also painted white.  That was funny in the 70’s and it’s funny now.

We have become so obsessed with being careful not to offend others and we creep around on eggshells because we wouldn’t want to offend anyone and we might end up with a lawsuit slapped on us for saying or doing something offensive.  I was flipping through some pictures on the web and a coworker saw that one of the pictures had nothing on it and it was black.  He looks that and starts laughing and says “That looks like it’s a picture of a room full of black people and they have their eyes closed!”.  I started laughing…that was funny!  I know you are reading this and are probably thinking Oh no, that’s not funny, that’s offensive because what if a black person were to have heard it and it made them uncomfortable?  He went on to say that the only way you could see anybody would be if they smiled or opened their eyes.  More hilarity.  Truly funny material right there.  If I had been drinking a soda it would have come flying out of my nose.   Are you still with me?  Think I am a bad person for laughing at a joke like that?  Well he was black.  See?  Most people are conditioned to respond to certain things and many people have been conditioned to respond rather than think for themselves.  Another incident that once happened is that I bought a very nice cowhide that had been tanned and it was designated to be hung on a wall for decoration or used as a floor covering.  It is beautiful.  A young person I know saw it and said that’s a terrible thing and should not be sold as this hide had been..as decoration.  She went on to say it’s horrible to kill animals for their skins and fur…this is a programmed response from someone who had not learned to think for herself.  There are a lot of people out there who don’t believe in killing or eating animals but these same people don’t think it through when it comes to quipping off about how cruel it is to use a cow hide for decoration or how bad using a sheepskin to make a blanket.  I always ask what would you rather see when killing the animal?  Throw the pelt away or keep it and use it because the animal is going to be slaughtered either way.   That question usually is one that causes them to stop and think for a moment and they usually say “I guess if you can’t stop people from eating the animals, maybe using the pelt is a good thing”.  This is especially true when they think about the hamburger they like so much.

Our society has become programmed in a manner of speaking to the degree that we often don’t get anything done because we are afraid of making some people unhappy or we are afraid of being sued.  I once bumped my head on an equipment rack at work and I went home (Using sick leave) because I wasn’t feeling so good after that.  My employer had a fit over that after they found that I had injured myself at work.  The real issue wasn’t that they had a concern for my well-being and in fact they didn’t care about me personally but rather that if I had gone home and died they would have been sued.  I just needed to rest and I felt fine the next day.  I would have found it more obnoxious to be prodded and tested to make sure I wouldn’t have a possibility of bringing legal action.

Yesterday, I asked the caretaker of the Apartments I live in to see if he could fix my window latch.  It wasn’t staying closed and sometimes the wind blows enough to force it open.  I live 15 stories up and the only higher floor is the building owner’s flat…it’s up there.  My window has a ledge outside the window that can support a person standing on it.  This guy comes to the apartment, climbs up on the ledge and proceeds to attempt an adjustment of the window.  I am standing there ready to grab the guy if he starts to fall but there was no need.  He was just fine and it appeared that the heights didn’t bother him at all.  In the U.S. he would have probably been fired for not using safety gear.  Truthfully, I don’t think he has any and he keeps his job.

The place where I live is different but I think I have the beginnings of an idea of where they are.  They have modern technology available to them, they have money to buy it, they have a natural resource to sell to continue to bring in revenue and the cycle continues.  I think the key differences in the successes they enjoy here is that they are where the U.S. was in about the 1970’s when it comes to environmental impact and litigious behavior.  I’m not suggesting that we throw out the true progress we have made but let’s start applying some common sense to what we are doing.

A good friend of mine worked for the last lead manufacturing company in the U.S.  They were being heavily regulated over the impact they had on the environment to a degree that they had to cut back on production.  The lead they produced was some of the highest quality in the world.  From a non-thinking person’s viewpoint the immediate response might be that’s great, they were producing enough pollution to be regulated and they have been stopped from damaging the environment.  Some questions if you don’t mind.  1.  Did they stop producing lead and stop damaging the environment?  2.  Does the demand for lead get curbed along with production being curbed?  3.  Does the production simply get moved to China where the same damaging effects are still present but jut not visible to the regulators in the U.S. ?  4.  Does this regulation displace more workers?  5.  Will we now get an inferior lead product from China at an inflated rate because we don’t produce yet another product because of over regulation? The last question, How does this help our economy?  How is it OK to let someone else do what we ourselves won’t do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Grass

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 28, 2012
Posted in: General Ramblings, Life In The Sandbox. Leave a comment

In life, the saying “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” has just been a metaphor that we used to say, we want what we cannot have because it somehow is made better by its exclusivity.  Cuban Cigars somehow might be one of those forbidden pleasures if you care for such things.  I had not considered the Middle East as a place of greener grass and to tell the truth about the actual green grass here…..there isn’t any.  Or if there is, it dies in the very hot sun, quickly.  As for the greener grass of life, I am sad to report that when I was living in the U.S. it started out as the land of opportunity.  However, In the last 10 years I had really come to a place where I started thinking that maybe I should go to some other country where they will give me free or cheap health care and free education and allow me to become a citizen that can get preferential treatment because I am at a disadvantage because I don’t speak the language very well if at all.  Maybe i should go work for people that will pay me far better than I can earn in my homeland.  This would enable me to pay off my bills and help my family.  Maybe I would be able to build a better life where I can one day retire without dying in debt.  This would be the life of an Expat with a few differences.  Expats generally have a skill that they bring to the table and can provide services that cannot be found locally.  Being an American Expat doesn’t mean that we aren’t sympathetic to the American cause it just means we live abroad as U.S. citizens.  Expats can be from any country that they are not currently not living in but typically are American.  I think this is because we have skilled workers but there are so many of them that companies can pay less for their knowledge.

It is a shame that America is the only country that imposes a Tax on it’s citizens EVEN WHEN they DON’T LIVE in the U.S… unless you stay out of the country for all but 35 days out of the year.  If you are fortunate enough to work in a country that has no tax, and you stay out of the US for almost a full year you can reap the benefit of no federal tax.  Would you believe they still impose a Social Security Tax?  I just hope it’s there when I can draw it.

As I continue to write my blog and share my views and experiences I hope you might somehow be encouraged to see that there are excellent opportunities out there but sometimes you really have to stretch to make it happen.  In my case, I traveled literally halfway around the world and while I do miss family and friends dearly, I know that to go back too soon would be to throw away my golden ticket.

OKAY!….who turned the flying dirt switch on?..not cool!

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 20, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Imagine a thick fog…but it’s dirt.  (OKAY!….who turned the flying dirt switch on?..not cool!)  It’s kinda baby powder like but not so nice and soft and it gets into everything.  I have heard stories of friends with waterproof watches that end up with the desert dust inside their waterproof watches and a trip to the jewelers is needed to clean them out.  That’s fine dust for sure.

Cars are sold with most everything wrapped in plastic.  The floor mats and floors, the headliners and even the seats can be specially wrapped in a thick clear plastic sheets. I have had my share of flying mud and dirt on the race track but it comes in obvious large muddy chunks and sticks to you.  But this?….Such a different world.
When the dirt isn’t flying the sun can be enjoyed but it does get cold here just like back home…just not freezing and wet….well it did rain one day….for a while.
More to come…..

Kraft Foods, what are you doing by not giving us more flavors of Tang?

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 15, 2012
Posted in: Corporations, General Ramblings, Life In The Sandbox.

So im wandering around a local grocery store and exploring. Trust me, its different when you don’t speak the local language. There is something to be said for businesses that use specific colors and design. As a consumer we don’t realize just how programmed we are until the words and letters don’t have any meaning to us. I could recognize a bag of Cheeto’s because of the colors and of course “Chester the cheetah”. Chilli’s restaurant sign is written in both English and Arabic so I was sure it was a Chilli’s and let’s not forget McDonald’s…The Golden Arches…This is a common occurrence all over. This brings me to a new discovery on my grocery store adventure…Tang, yeah we’ve all seen the brightly colored orange container and are familiar with the basic design of the logoized writing. But imagine for a second…you’re walking along, you see something that looks like a Tang product but is the wrong color, yet has a bright color in the same color schema and has the right font but isn’t orange or orange flavored. I found about six different flavors of the stuff. Of course I didn’t even acknowledge the Orange as you can get it by the bucket in the states. But I found Mango, Pineapple, and Apple so I bought a couple different ones to try. This discovery led me do some digging around the net… I found we are being short changed by our very own Kraft company on flavors and while some sound nasty to me, I included a link listing more than just simple American orange.

http://tangtoday.com/list-of-tang-flavours/

A way to Fix the U.S.

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 3, 2012
Posted in: General Ramblings. Leave a comment

How long will we tolerate giving the farm away?

I am living in a place that produces about 10 percent of the worlds oil exports and chances are, if you drive a car you have burned some of the oil from here.  This is a product that has a strong demand if only because the world is addicted to it.  At this point, it doesn’t really matter when it comes to the country’s financial well being.  What does matter is that there is a big demand for it and like it or not, that demand pays the bills, end of story.

America used to be a great nation that produced things that the world wanted.  We still could if it weren’t for the costs associated with the production.  In the place I live now, you can’t really outsource oil production so the income is almost a guarantee.  That is, unless, an alternative for oil is discovered and until then, it isn’t going to change.

In the middle east, I drive by the oil refineries every day as I go to work and the refining towers used to crack the oil generate waste vapors that are burned off and you can see the fires from the fifty or so stacks.  It’s an amazing site to see indeed.  The liberal tree huggers would have a heart attack if they saw this and sometimes I think it might not be a bad thing.  I truly believe that there are processes used to produce certain goods that are going to create a certain amount of pollution and there isn’t a way to stop it.  It’s the old saying, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omlet.  This thought brings me to my next thought.  We in America used to produce many goods that we and the rest of the world want.  But these days we are over regulated and we can’t break any eggs so to speak.  By that I mean, the ecology passionate people (Freaks) have turned the act of “saving the earth” into a religion and it makes it it near impossible to make some of the things we used to make.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world has the sense to realize this paradigm and thusly continues to make those goods we all need.

One way to stop some of the problems of job loss is to impute an import tax on goods that would make them cost the same as what they would cost to produce in the U.S.  Take that tax and use it to aid in education for U.S. residents ONLY.  Other countries tariff imported goods and it works.  We are too touchy feely and are afraid to offend anyone.  I say you do what you need to in an effort to protect your own country first.  If other countries don’t like it, too bad.  We cannot afford to keep giving ours away but the bleeding hearts want to do exactly that.  Problem is, there are less tax paying citizens every day as jobs dry up and go to other countries.  I am in a unique situation but I in fact have exited the country because of a lack of good paying jobs at home.  I reap the benefits of working in a place where they don’t give away the farm.  In some ways they can’t…they produce oil and it comes from the ground of the country.  Can you imagine the economic effects on the world oil market if the ecology freaks had their way and were able to stop oil production in the middle east?  In a way, they have had a bad influence on at least the U.S. market because they have slowed or blocked oil drilling in places like Alaska at the expense of the people.  How long will we be so tolerant of this kind of self defeating behavior?  How long until we find ways to make it too expensive to import cheaply made crappy goods so that the jobs will be brought back home?  How long will it be before America wakes up and collectively says ENOUGH is ENOUGH!?

Experienceing A New World

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 3, 2012
Posted in: Life In The Sandbox. Leave a comment

I recall, years ago, I used to look at the map of the world and think about where I would want to live if I moved.  I had thought about where that would be but I could never find just the right place.  Now I find myself in the desert in the middle east.  I thought it would be the last place I would ever want to live but I am finding out that it’s actually a place that I am really enjoying.  Granted it could be a honeymoon phase right now but I have connected with good friends here who I knew back home and they have helped make the experience excellent.

Driving here is something that one must experience to understand.  I can say that a few years of demolition derby racing has helped.  There are a road rules but they are loosely interpreted and you must have nerves of steel to survive.  The rules are simple, merge without signaling and stay out of the fast lane unless you are going fast!  Commuting to work hovers around 100 MPH.  Use of turn signals are a sign of weakness so never tip your hand. Those 100mph speeds are common and that’s slow for some drivers.

I know some of you are thinking, if it’s so good why don’t you just stay there…hmm..maybe.

I am told “Just wait until the heat comes, then we will see if you like it so much here”.  Heat?….Let us define heat shall we?   It’s 125 degrees in the daytime and a cool crisp 95-100 in the evening.  This is coupled with the occasional sandstorm that fills the air with enough dust to block the sun so much that you can look directly at it and see it without hurting your eyes.  I can tell you the sun is not as much a yellow ball of fire but it’s more of a brilliant white with a very distinct edge…ask me how I know.

Dining…The restaurants here are really good.  Not only is the quality of the food outstanding, the table service is superb.  It really leaves me not wanting to return to American dining because of the typical poor service, bad mannerisms of most wait staff and less than excellent food.  In the U.S. we deal in volume and cattle call like engagements when dining out.  Here, it’s about enjoying your meal and conversation with friends and family when dining out.  There’s never a rush and the seating isn’t like the seating found in the U.S.  I am not huge but I am far from a beanpole.  My experience when dining out in the U.S. is that the booths SUCK in most eateries and they are cramped.  After I have eaten, I can’t wait to get out of the place because of crappy table seating.  Don’t think for a second that this isn’t planned.  I am sure it is.  I have yet to find a crappy cramped booth where only a child would be comfortably seated.

Am I jaded, yes.  Have I been cranky about these things before I left, yes.  Have I discovered a place where good service still exists in a place where it isn’t about volume sales?  Yes.  Why is the concept of quality so hard to grasp in America?