Suddenly... nothing happened!

The middle management got back to Blighty earlier this week, and LM phoned me this morning.

Departure is now set back until 28th January, "but don't be suprised if that slides". The accommodation isn't ready - there was a trouble with the bathrooms (electrical sockets next to the washbasins, wall tiles on the floors - actually all par for the course in HUDC). The site manager told them that the project was only a month behind schedule, and this was astonishing. Indeed. The workforce are Egyptians, not locals, so that might explain this relative speed.

So if we do go out at the end of this month, we'll probably be in a hotel for a while.

The classrooms are far from being ready, the workforce consisting of HUDC's finest, a couple of depressed looking souls who turn up and mooch around occasionally.

And there's a problem with the students, who are to be teachers at the college in due course. They have been paid only nominally for the last month or so - something in the region of £10 per month. Naturally, they're a bit pissed off about this. This might lead to mutiny and is the biggest potential problem, as I see it, given the obduracy of HUDC's bureaucracy.

I've got curriculum development work I can be getting on with, in a fairly leisurely fashion it must be said. Also work for my masters degree. And making the most of the unexpected time with the family and my friends.

Conversation with a Dalek

HD rang me a few days ago from HUDC to tell me that I won't be flying out there before the end of January. I THINK that's what he said - it was a terrible line, and he sounded like a dalek, on hallucinogens, underwater.

It was strangely disappointing because I was psyched up for departure. However, one can come to terms with such disappointment, at home with one's family whilst on the payroll. There's still a lot I can do on the curriculum mapping, and that ties in with my own academic work, so there's no need for idleness.

I'm Still Here

In Blighty, that is. There'll be no progress with the visa before next Monday, so the earliest flight out to HUDC will be next Wednesday or thereabouts.

First Cracks

The last post was actually written on a Saturday on the train home. Now, after an absurdly short weekend, it’s Monday night and I’m blogging from a slightly too cold hotel room. This is likely the last week at The Employer’s offices. I fucking hope so.

There’s been a visa swingometer malarkey. First I was going out with the others on 30^th. Then, I spoke to the woman who deals with this and she told me the logistics were hopeless. LM took it on the chin and said he’d manage for the first week. I’d go out during the first week of January, probably Friday (to test a theory that you whizz through immigration and customs, of a Friday).

Then came a phone conversation between LM and HD, in which the latter pronounced a mad decree: I should travel with them as planned, on the 30^th, “on a tourist visa.”

I’m beginning to wonder if this blighter is all there. Tourist visas to HUDC are a notorious pain in the arse to arrange. Besides, I’m an employee on a contract which is blessed by C. Moutard himself. Entering the country by nefarious means would not only get the whole business off on the wrong foot, but could theoretically involve Your Own Correspondent being Bound Gagged and Sodomised in an HUDC jail, and left without his supper, to boot. “Fuck that”, I said, in a roundabout way.