The following morning, for the first meeting of the day, the person I was meeting with showed up an hour late. Then the next showed up early.
Met with a translator today. She is cute and idealistic, only 17 years old. Man can she talk. What is it about people in this part of the world and their desire to run their mouth? Maybe it’s all in the interest of talking to a foreigner. I took her to lunch at the hotel and it was pretty amazing. I even had some fresh salad and didn’t get sick. Fresh cheese, so many different types; pasta, meat, salads of many forms, even freshly made hummus. De-licious. And expensive. But it was worth it. Hell, I’m not paying for it. Unless I were to get sick, but that’s why I’m eating the good-quality hotel food and not something scary from outside! She told me a little about the marriage ceremony; how the women wear very, very heavy jewelry on their wedding day. I think she said 30 kilos. She kept taking her boyfriend’s calls; he is in the army. Whatever, I didn’t complain about it. She’s young. The cell phone service kept on crapping out on us. Apparently the other one had worked really well. That is, until they got in a disagreement with the government. Then they didn’t work at all. Now this other company has a monopoly and frankly it sucks. I may have mentioned this above, but the major cell phone company shut down in December leaving a monopoly for the government-issued cell phone service which is always causing problems. You can only make phone calls half the time.
The second realtor I met with showed up 20 minutes late. She didn’t speak any English so Yazgul the translator had to translate for us. I think she did a pretty good job. The lady was slightly upset that I wasn’t planning on renting an apartment or house, but oh well. I was a little nervous because Yazgul initially told her that’s what I wanted.
Anyways, I had a third meeting tonight. This was with someone from the embassy. 7:30 rolled around and he still wasn’t here, so I became very confused. Do we have a meeting for tomorrow night instead? Do I have it all wrong? Is he planning on standing me up? So I called him. He wasn’t going to be here for another 45 minutes. What is it with these people??? Maybe timing isn’t an issue; either that or they’re just inconsiderate. Well the 2nd guy was someone from the US embassy so it had to be inconsiderateness. If that’s a word. Anyways, we grabbed a beer and I enjoyed meeting with him and he confirmed that these large buildings everywhere were nothing but distant facades which hide the problems. Makes sense. I learned today that the citizens virtually get free gas; in which case the price of gas is not displayed anywhere. Also, there is a lot of corruption when it comes to housing. The government limits where foreigners can live as to not have a lot of encounters with foreigners. Pictures of the president are everywhere, everywhere everywhere. In taxis, on billboards, in hotels and office buildings. I saw him in the bank, I saw him at the car dealership. Hail the president. You can’t talk about the government in a negative way here. It makes everywhere feel uncomfortable, because essentially… everyone is being WATCHED. Big brother never stops watching you.
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