Adventures of Mr.Behi

The Bag Pipe

The British ambassador had another big party last night and when we got home after sunset, we saw a man in Scottish costume playing a bag pipe for his guests. Later I found out that the party meant to celebrate birthday of The Queen of England. For that, we faced yet again another security restriction around our place. I was so pissed off that I wanted to write to the ambassador and complain.
I was talking to Mrs.Behi and we were wondering if any Iranian diplomat was invited and then was imagined how cool it would be to dress up and crash the party as Iranian delegates...:)

Blair in our neighborhood

British prime minister is touring Africa before leaving his office and we got a glimpse of his visit to Tripoli. His visit brought a very tight security to the city. Our backyard parking area is cleared by the police and there were checkpoints all around our street. I should have said first that our apartment is really close to the residence of British ambassador to Libya (I should take the chance and thank the ambassador for the good view that we enjoy everyday and for the beautiful sound of birds nesting in the tall trees of his garden :)

We managed to also encounter their convoy when police stopped the traffic for them to pass (everyone stopped: cars + pedestrians + little boys with their bicycles for 15 minutes anticipating the convoy).

You could see UK and Libyan flags in many places. Plain green flag of Libya and flag of the UK with that many lines crossing in it. I am sure Britons will as well make so many lines in the plain, untouched area of Libyan deserts in search of oil in years to come. It was announced that BP is back after 30 years and Shell is here already for a year, busy with exploration. I know  that British Gas is also here.

My interesting clients

Oil business is booming in Libya and you see oil companies pouring in from all corners of the world for acquiring exploration licenses in Libya. Almost all of these companies are considered potential or current customers for the services that my employer offers. My job is show certain innovative technologies to these companies through demonstrations, pilot projects, technical workshops, presentations etc.

The fabulous things about what I do is that I have the chance to see how different people/companies express their needs/concerns and it is more interesting to see how difference in cultural background influences the way they perceive you and your offer. I do not want to judge people here, not at all. Nor I am trying to see which approach is better or worse.

The other day, I had a meeting with a Norwegian manager. He asked us to go to his office, 10:00 a.m sharp to discuss a technical training we offered for his organization. Normally we would start explaining our offer in details to encourage the purchase. This guy know exactly what he wanted, what he did not want, what was enough and what was extra. He was very content about the timing for the delivery of the service, people who need to attend in training and what he wanted from us. It was the most precise and up to the point meeting in many months.

I recently had a very successful pilot project with a group  of Italian experts that resulted in a new sales after a week. I found them very emotional and at the same time very friendly. I walked into their office one day and soon enough, the talks diverted to cool things about the city, where to go and see while in Italy etc. Rather than telling me what they needed, they waited to see what I had to offer and were intrigued by any new thing they were seeing. The cool part was joining them around their coffee machine.  One of them told me that in his home city alone, there are 6 different version of coffee specific to the district and he explained how Italians are in favor of experimenting new things and how much they dislike branding and standardization for their food items. Once after lunch when I was with them in the elevator, listening to them talking in Italian, one of them turned to me and said: "Don't worry we are not fighting" :)

One of the roads to Rome

It was once said that all the roads end to Rome. This can still be considered correct for Tripoli because either of western or eastern roads can take you to famous Roman archaeological sites in Libya. Last weekend, we went to the small one in the west,  the Roman city of Sebratah.

I had to be careful not to loose my way so before going, I gave the coordinates of the place and important turning points of the route to the GPS. Google Earth can read from Garmin GPS(s) but can not write back to them so I had to manually read the coordinates from Google Earth screen and enter them in the device.

Sebratah is almost 80 Kms west of Tripoli. The road is fine if you stay alert of those drivers who flip your side mirror a little bit when they take over you! we got there almost around lunch time. See our route to Sebratah and our walk within it in Google Earth. You will see places where I moved back and forth with my GPS hanging from my belt and the result is interesting. See our route in GoogleEarth

Sebratah is a city that has footprints of many kingdoms but for a normal visitor, the dominance of Roman architecture is obvious. Our first stop was the beautiful theater with circling rounds of seats in front of the well preserved stage, surrounded by marble pillars and high walls (see pictures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Along the costs, we could see remains of what once was sea side bathing room. Nice and creative tile works very well preserved after this many years made by small, coloured pebbles (see pictures 7, 8)
Not so many statues in here,probably many of them taken to museums if not else (I pictured these two 9, 10) paved streets of Sebratah (11) took us finally to seashore where we got the chance to out our feet inside the cool water and let the blue sea to absorb some of the heat (12)

Read more about Sebratah

Tripoli; where men love Coffee and Tobacco

If you happen to see a Libyan man taking a break, statistical chance of seeing a cup of coffee in one of his hands and a cigarette in the other is close to certain. People here are in love of cappuccino and you can easily notice it by looking at the number of coffee houses in the city. Basically wherever you see men are hanging out, you should expect a coffee place in the corner. The atmosphere is very live as many of these places put chairs and tables outside if they have space in front. What I feel is that men here really like to hang around with their friends to chat, It happened to me sometimes that I see a couple of guys and I see them in the same place after coming back in couple of hours.

The scene is totally masculine! You do not see anyone coming with wife or fiancé in such coffee stores. Me and Mrs.Behi felt it would be very strange to sit in such a place because she would appear as the only lady around :) but if we ever see one of them with a non-smoking section, I am sure we will join. In some modern places up town however, we could notice boys and girls having coffee together in the family section of one restaurant.

There is one of these coffee stores that we discovered and bought coffee the other day called “Favanis”. This is an all-time busy store with many tables outside, very cosy indeed but you just need to buy the coffee and get out to survive the cloud of tobacco smoke that is hovering around the main door.

“Favanis” is connected to a juice shop and a very good bakery with the same name. The bakery is the best with all variety of bread, a chocolate cookie stand and a display for sweets. There is always one rack of fresh bread came right from the oven! Get one of the hot-creamy ones, go next door, get a nice cappuccino and you got your refreshment. The cashier is a very nice person, very cheerful indeed. Last time we went there, he gave a rose to Mrs.Behi…an incredible gesture. We love our neighbourhood.

The United Behi in Tripoli

Mr. and Mrs.Behi have been incredibly busy in the past few days. We were in Iran trying to decide what to pack and bring to Libya, meeting people we love and say good buy to people we know. We had some funny moments too:

- One night after we had dinner with my brother and his fiancé, we reached home around midnight, it was one of the heaviest rains in Tehran as far as I could remember. We got out of the car and our apartment key slipped out of my hand into the deep water way...in the cold and darkness...two days before travelling and things were still unpacked…
- We were happily packing with the impression of being able to freight our goods by air and all of a sudden, we realized that there was no such service to our destination by our airline so we ended up with 160 Kgs of luggage after all deductions and removal of unnecessary books and clothes.

We stayed one night in Dubai with one mission...buying two nice Mac laptops and we did...and now we are wondering why so many people use windows...this thing is a coolest...

I am so proud and happy to arrive in Tripoli with Mrs.Behi...everything went very nice after our arrival: We passed the passport control after five minutes (I previously waited 30 or more behind that line) for some reason, the guy next to the first x-ray machine called us from where we were in the queue and let us pass swiftly after that...I read before in the Libya country guide of my company that there is a censorship department in Libya that inspects books and CDs before entry...that proved all wrong as we managed to bring all we wanted...Mrs.Behi got a very good first impression here, she has been telling me since:" This is much better than what you told me" and she loved the apartment we got...We unpacked in one hour what we packed in five days :) and are now going to start our next project which is furnishing the apartment....I have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world and in the news right now which is not that bad at all...Mr and Mrs Behi are united again in a new city, new home and we will have new things coming to us in days and months to come...

When I was lost in the dark

I already wrote here about the problem of not having enough road signs in tripoli (link) last night was a fun night for me, It was 10:30 p.m and I started driving home after having dinner with one of the Iranian friends. I drove to this heavily congested road and finally after a while I found an exit to another road that was supposed to take me home on its east end. The exit entered a roundabout with a couple of other exits, non of them with any sign. So guess what, I ended up in a wrong street and soon in a highway that led me to the middle of no where. It fortunately had one exit sign but after that I was left in the dark.

I got stranded for like 40 minutes in the dark streets and finally realised that I would not get out like that. So I stopped the car and looked at the beautiful full moon in the horizon:.... "so if moon has risen from south-south east, then I should head on the opposite to go towards north where the sea and the downtown are..." so that was the direction I drove to and survived :) but I was so much fun...riding a brand new car in a city and using moon for navigation....:)

No.5, Tripoli, Libya!

It all started when my bank asked for my new home address in Tripoli as they said they could not accept the P.O.Box of the company. So I said fine, called the company agent and asked for the postal address of the apartment that I will be staying at. This was the reply I received when I asked: You see this road around the office, you follow and follow till you see this building with this color and then there is an exit, you get into the exit and there is round about, you pass it and there is a white building...you pass it and there is a building with this many floors, after that there is an alley, you get in and turn left and ask the guard, he will tell you! But I need to write it to my bank what is the street number? I asked with surprise.

I finally gathered that many streets do not have any name here. The postmen here should be kings of postmen getting around and finding places and even the address of the post office is like "you know this shop there? ....get to it and go right....". Finally, my address was like, after this...and in front of that...and happily I could assign your apartment number with the floor which is in fact a digit! That was fun discussing this with people and interestingly, they told me that before lifting the embargo, in one time there was the fear of invasion by foreign forces so the government removed all the road signs that were indicating the distance between the cities and this also happened to many of the streets...I think they need a reminder to put them back...imagine driving in a desert with no road signs...

I am in Tripoli in front of the park, near the white building, turn left when you see the big tree and get into the alley (normally some guys are standing there) get in and drive as long as when you get back, you wouldn't see the sea...turn left and that is me...No.5, Tripoli, Libya...

Libya after embargo

I came back to Libya a few days ago again without Mrs.Behi. We need to wait for the hectic visa process to pass so we can reunite. Tripoli is one level greener that last November and weather is absolutely great -nice, cool and comfortable with a little bit of refreshing mosture in the air.

All the way from the airport and in couple of more occasions, I tried to take some pictures from the streets to give a glimse of life of Tripoli to Mrs.Behi (thanks to the vibration reduction of my new Nikoor lense, I managed to get some good shots from the car). The lifting of US embargo is showing itself vividly, as the rush of the foreign oil companies for new prospects feeds money to the economy, people are getting more to pend. Tripoli is a city with not much to do but it is obvious that higher investing capability is bringing nicer colors to the shop windows.

One good thing here is the good price of Italian cloths and apparantly suites are chaeper than Italy itself as no taxation occures. Yet still, I assume many of the Libyans would not consider those cheap either. Why did Libya go to that road in the first place? this is the question I always ask and how come all of a sudden everything changed in the minds of the leaders? and to be honest, the embargo that they went through (with no flight coming in and out) is much worse than the US embargo that is imposed on Iran-actually for the moment before it gets worse. Libyans are rising from the misery of the embargo that targeted their leaders but victimized them themselves!

Tripoli, the real estate adventure

When I was in Tripoli, I decided to be proactive and started my search for a place to rent. I was told that I will have an allowance of around 3300 Dinars (around 3000 USD) per month as a cap for my rental fee. The search for residence was so much fun especially with the agent I had with me. Very friendly and nice with an amusing accent of English.

The houses he started with were absolute no no. I first thought he wanted to test my taste with the most unbearable ones. His approach towards my requests and questions was very interesting.

"Sir, you like the house, the owner will bring for you everything...." I heard this every and each time we were in a new property. He was also very keen to talk about the city, the good areas, shops, prices etc which was great.
Most of the expatriates of Tripoli are living in a complex of villas in the western skirt of the city. Very nice place but full and expensive. I also visited many villas far from the city and they were HUGE. I found a fantastic villa, three stories, 7 bedrooms, a terrace, back yard, two kitchens...you could play football in the living room and the design was brilliant but how many rooms do a couple need? I was amazed that most of the houses that they offered me were so big...in one occasion. I found myself in a 8 bedroom three story villa where a small company could comfortably move in...I met different sorts of land lords. Young, middle-aged and old. Some educated in the west and had a good command of English...and for others I needed my guide to interpret. I was amazed when I realised that one of the guys I met was former oil minister of Libya!

"In the past here is farm....you know farm?ha? ya lot of orange juice!  You know orange juice?"

and I realised my guide meant that the area used to be an orange garden before. I was enjoying a lot the way he wanted to confirm many of the words he used. During our searches, I leaned about the place where Tripoli gangs were living, where the black market was located, where the most expensive shops were also had a chance to know about the nice restaurants, etc. He even pointed to a long wall and said "Hospital for crazy people".

Finally we found the one, a nice and new apartment with three bedrooms and two nice balconies looking westward with the view of a diplomatic garden and the sea, very close to my future office and in a very clean area. That is where Mr and Mrs.Behi will live when they move in.

My guide generously offered me dinner that night, we went to a place in the eastern suburbs of Tripoli, where they call "the hole" or in Arabic "Hofrah". Again the same sort of question from my guide :" Sir, here they sell fish, you know fish?" :-) It was a complex of five or six restaurants but looked more like a fish market in the first glance with the variety of fish displayed nicely in the front. You should choose one and then enter the restaurant. They will barbecue the fish and bring it for you. The place does not have a five star look but it is nice, the fish was fantastic maybe because our table was also by the sea. In future, I will be able to blog about beautiful Mediterranean sunsets from my balcony...We have a new window to a new era...