Category Archives: expatriate life

Bible study, expatriate life

The End of an Era

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Sad to see this die. I still have the sheet of the signatures of those who gave it to me.

I’m much engaged these days in trying to finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. This has given me more trouble than I anticipated. I’m making progress, now down to the last three chapters of the first draft. I’ll finish one of those today and get started on another. Perhaps I’ll have it finished by the end of the weekend and will make a start on editing. I know that, as I progressed through the chapters, I changed the information I was putting into the Leader’s Guide. I’ll have to decide if I need to make many changes to the earlier chapters.

My post today will be somewhat brief. We made a trip to Texas in early October for a grandson’s birthday. It was just a week, but an event took place back at our empty house that I see as significant. Our downstairs clock stopped working. It’s batter powered, and of course I have to put in new batteries from time to time. I was working in The Dungeon, where the clock resides, and on the first day back noticed it had stopped running.

No problem, I thought. I’ll change the batteries. Alas, we were out of AA batteries. I put them on the shopping list, and promptly forgot to get them at the store even though they were on the list. Then I forgot to put them on the list for the next week. Finally, on my third trip to the store after our return, I got the batteries.

It took me almost another week before I cut open the package, took three batteries downstairs, and put them in the clock. And…nothing. The clock didn’t start. No problem, I thought. I took the batteries out and cleaned the terminals on the clock. Although the old batteries I removed looked okay, perhaps they had left a corrosive film that was preventing the new batteries from working. I put the new batteries back in and…nothing.

I double-checked to make sure the new batteries were in the correct way. They were. I came to a conclusion: The clock had quit working.

The clock is 36 years old. It was a gift to me on the occasion of my leaving Saudi Arabia to end my expatriate life there and return to the States, along with Lynda and our two pre-school children. It was from the Pilipino men I worked with. I had bonded with them, and they gave me this as a result.

The chimes kept me on track in The Dungeon, but, when set on loud, could also be heard through much of the house.

The clock chimed, beginning at 6:00 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. One chime on the half hour, the number hours on the hour. From it’s location downstairs, we could just hear it where our reading chairs are in the living room. If the TV was off, that is, we could hear it, and I found it to be a comforting sound. I don’t know how much our guests who stayed in the guest bedroom downstairs liked it, sounding off louder for them at an early hour when all they wanted to do was sleep in.

It will be sad to discard this clock. It’s a link to an era, our expatriate life. It survived the journey home (since our shipment was already sent we had to carry it in our luggage through Europe to Rhode Island to Kansas City to Meade thence by car to North Carolina), at least one big fall off the wall (when hit with a ball thrown for the dog), more years in storage, and moves in Arkansas until it came to a permanent place on The Dungeon wall.

Throwing it away is breaking that link to our expatriate life. I know, it’s nearly 36 years since we returned from Saudi and over 29 years since we returned from Kuwait. We have many souvenirs of those times. Still, this was special. Sad to see it go, but nothing lasts forever.

Wednesday night I taught a class at church, on 1 Timothy 5:26 through 6:11, which includes the part about the love of money being the root of all evil. I used the illustration of going to the Middle East to pursue a better job for more money, and wondered if chasing the dollar like that was the right example to show for my children. Then to myself I wondered if, 38 years after going there, and 29 years after our return, if it wasn’t time to let this part of life go, to quit using examples from that. Just as disposing of the clock is sad, so is making a further break with my life from several decades ago, but it’s time.

I’ll remove the batteries from the clock, but will put it in the garage for a while. Who knows, maybe these batteries, brand new from Wal-Mart, were bad. One can always hope.

 

expatriate life, family, miscellaneous, travel

Notre Dame

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It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us.

I imagine just about everyone who has a blog and who at some time has visited Notre Dame will be making a post about it. I’ll join that army.

We visited Notre Dame in July 1982 while touring Europe en route to the USA from Saudi Arabia. We had just finished our first year in Saudi. Charles was 2 1/2, Sara a little over a year. Perhaps we were foolish taking two youngins’ on such a trip. We were young ourselves back then—and probably foolish.

Hard to get close enough to see people and much of the structure.

Lynda’s must-see city in Europe was Rome and mine was Paris. So we started our 28-day tour in Rome and ended it in Paris. It was a magical time, a once in a lifetime experience. Lynda and I have lots of good memories of that trip.

And a few photos. I think it was our last full day in Paris that we went to see Notre Dame. We had five nights and four days there. The day we arrived we learned the Louvre was closed due to a labor dispute. Bummer. We did other things, and I think the third day we were to go to Notre Dame, but the Louvre opened so we went there, leaving the famous cathedral for the last day in Europe.

Wish I were a better photographer.

We were at Notre Dame somewhat late in the afternoon. After relaxing and taking photos around the outside we went to go inside. A worker stopped us, saying mass was just starting. Not being Catholic that didn’t lure us in, but they would let you in if you wanted to attend mass. Lynda did that while I kept the kids outside, then, maybe ten or fifteen minutes later we switched. I felt a little guilty telling the worker I wanted to attend mass when I didn’t really, but, sometimes we do what we have to do. This was our last opportunity on the trip.

The interior had many beautiful views.

I remember inside as dark but beautiful. I made a quick pass around the inside perimeter, admiring all that I saw. I don’t have specific memories of this or that piece of artwork, but no matter. I went, we went, and that’s what was important.

While inside I snapped some photos. We had a good camera, a Nikon SLR with a telephoto lens, but I wasn’t much of photographer I’m afraid. You can see them on this post, not quite in focus, looking like they were taken in haste instead of with care. Alas.

The cathedral dominated the entire area.

I don’t remember which of us took the outside photos, but it was probably me as I’m not in any of them but Lynda and the kids are. They might be a little better than the inside ones.

We didn’t keep a trip diary then, so have no notes of what we saw, only the photos and perhaps a postcard or letter mailed home, which parents saved and gave to us years later. If time allows, I’ll find them in a file and see if I have anything to add. Given that this was our last day and we were then to head home to see parents, I don’t think I’ll find anything in there.

The fire was, of course, devastating. It’s a shame, though we look forward to rebuilding. I suspect I won’t ever get back there again, as there are too many places in the world to see should I ever again make an overseas trip.

expatriate life, Operation Lotus Sunday

The Story Behind “Operation Lotus Sunday” – Our 1983 Trip

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In late July 1983, Lynda and the kids flew home from Saudi Arabia to miss the worst of the Al Hasa summer. Temperature 120F+, humidity 70%. We had first planned out in great detail our vacation to travel to Asia. To go around-the-world cost almost the same as a round trip across the Atlantic. So the family went on, planning to visit Rhode Island and Kansas. I would come in early September. We would be in Hong Kong on September 5.

To visit China, or Red China as we called it then, was a dream. It was only twelve years since Nixon had made his overtures to China, and only two since it had opened up to USA tourism—or maybe to all Western or outside tourism. We were in a place where we had some disposable income to afford the trip, and the time to make it. Lynda had seen an exhibit of the terracotta soldiers, uncovered in the Xian area, when it toured through Kansas City in the mid-1970s. She wanted to see them in situ. I of course wanted to see the Great Wall. We had studied ahead and put together an itinerary that would take us through six Chinese cities in fourteen days.

And not just in China. We would start in Hong Kong for several days, go to China by train, fly back to Hong Kong from Beijing and transfer to a flight to Manila, then fly on to Bangkok, and “home” to Al Khobar. People probably thought we were crazy to try to do so much. Charles was 4 yrs 7 mos. old, and Sara was 2 yrs 5 months old. They did well on airplanes and buses, and actually did fairly well on the various tours.

China would be different, however. There would be no off the cuff touring. Everything would be planned out by Swire Travel, no doubt under the strict supervision of the government. We would be told where to go and what to do. How would the kids do on this trip?

The cities on our China itinerary were Guangzhou (formerly called Canton), Kunming, a side trip to the Stone Forest, Chengdu, Xian, and Beijing. Those of you who have read Operation Lotus Sunday will recognize this as the itinerary of the Brownwells, the tourist couple who were American expats living in Saudi Arabia and touring China with their two preschool children. Hmm, sound familiar?

On this particular trip, I brought a 1983 day timer with me that I had bought in Saudi. I had made a number of entries through the year, mainly for business, but wanted to keep a trip diary and thought that would be a good book to do it in. The previous year, summer of 1982, we had toured Europe. We hadn’t kept a trip diary on that trip, and the memory of the specific things we had seen were already fading. I didn’t want that to happen this time.

So how did I get from a 1983 tour of China with my family to the plot of a novel? See the next installment.

 

expatriate life, family, Operation Lotus Sunday

More on the Genesis of “China Tour”

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So I’m at the Write to Publish Conference in Wheaton, Illinois, in May 2004. I learn that publishers don’t want to publish someone who has written a story, but someone who has written a good story and has the potential for a long career with them. At that point in my career I had written one novel that I was figuring out how to get published, plus some poetry.

During the conference I began to think about what else I could publish. Very quickly the idea for a baseball novel came to me. I committed it to some notes. More slowly came the idea for a different novel, one that happened from an experience our family had overseas.

When we lived in Saudi Arabia we had the good fortune to do some traveling. In 1982 we did Europe for 28 days; also in ’82 we went to Cairo for Christmas. In 1983 we decided to do Asia, and planned for 30 days there. At the time of the trip, Sept-Oct, Charles was 4 1/2 and Sara was just under 2 1/2. They were with us on the trip, of course, since we didn’t do what some couples did, taking the kids home to be with grandparents then going on a trip by ourselves.

Our itinerary was Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, and Thailand. Two weeks in China was the biggest part of that. It had just opened to Western tourism a couple of years before that, and it seemed exciting to go there. At our stop in Hong Kong we visited with our church’s missionaries there, who asked us to carry Chinese language Bibles in and make contact with a man of our church in Beijing. Of course we said yes, not thinking much about what that meant.

A day or two later it hit us when we received the small suitcase with the materials: Bibles, cassette tapes, tracts, and who knows what in that bag. We thought about getting them through customs, as well has how to reach our contact in Beijing with just a name and phone number—and that of the location where his wife worked.

The short story is we got the Bibles through customs, to Beijing, and with the help of our tour guide were able to make contact with Alan. He had spent over two decades in a prison camp because he wouldn’t deny the name of Christ when asked to by Chairman Mao’s goons. Meeting him and his wife in that restaurant in Beijing was one of the great events of our lives.

Back to Wheaton in 2004. I wondered if I could make a novel out of a Bible-smuggling American tourist couple who were expats. What kind of trouble could I put them in? Would I put that in the current era or in 1983? On that trip I kept a very good trip diary, which had not been lost in the moves we made over the years. I also kept a lot of the literature they gave us at hotels and other tourist stops, as well as souvenir books we bought. So I had data to put it in 1983. That seemed like the better option, but what to do to make a full novel out of this story?

1983 was still Cold War times. President Reagan was working on arms deals and the Strategic Defense Initiative, meeting with world leaders. We all assumed that the CIA had our back, infiltrating countries, gathering intelligence, helping our government get the upper hand on our enemies without going to war. The first of Tom Clancy’s novels were a year away, but spy novels abounded. What if, I thought, I put this American couple into the middle of a CIA operation in China? A major plot twist came to mind fairly quickly.

By the last day of the conference this idea had come together. I hadn’t yet put anything on paper, but I had the idea. At the last lunch I wound up sitting at the same table as James Scott Bell. He was the keynote speaker for the evening sessions, and thought I hadn’t heard of him till that conference he seemed to be a rock star at this Christian writing conference.

We all talked about our works-in-progress, or planned. I said what I was thinking of for a novel. Someone asked how I could pull that off, i.e. China in 1983. I told of our trip there and of the trip diary and other literature I had. James Scott Bell nodded approvingly, though I don’t remember him saying much.

So that’s it. May 2004 was when I first thought of the book. Through the years I’ve worked on the tag line, a summary, and thought through scenes. But it wasn’t until October 2012 that I actually committed a word of it to paper or pixel. It’s now sitting at 34,300 words, looking at a February 2013 finish, maybe earlier if life aligns right. Figuring a month cooling off and a month to do final edits and publishing tasks, I’m looking at an April 2013 book launch.

Stay tuned.

career, expatriate life

Homesickness

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Our company has a couple of project opportunities in the Middle East, specifically in the United Arab Emirates. From 1988 to 1990 I made about two dozen trips from Kuwait to the UAE for business purposes, sometimes with business stops in Qatar or Bahrain. That’s what my trip to Phoenix was about a couple of weeks ago.

Today I met the two men who are putting our share of the marketing package together, my second meeting with them. After completing our work, I took ten or fifteen minutes to share with them anecdotes from my five years in the Arabian Gulf region. We talked about mosques and dress code and brutal judicial punishment and rubiyan (local shrimp), etc. I don’t know that either one of them wants to make a trip there as a result of my reminiscences.

But it made me homesick for the Arab lands. Only those five years of my life were spent there, but I enjoyed it then and talking about it now, I miss it. After the meeting I went to see a Pakistani man who works for us. He spent some years in Dubai, and we frequently share a few Arabic phrases and joint experiences. That just deepened the homesickness.

I lived twenty-two years in Rhode Island, seven years in Kansas City, two and a half years in Saudi Arabia, four years in Asheboro, North Carolina, two and a half years in Kuwait, another half year in Asheboro, and now over eighteen years in northwest Arkansas. Whenever I have left one place for another, homesickness has set it.

For in truth I have loved every place I’ve ever lived, and almost every place I’ve ever visited. Each place had a richness to be explored, tapped, and consumed, adding to gray-cell-stored data that now gives me a full set of memories. Some of this data is actually becoming fodder for writing. One of the scenes in Doctor Luke’s Assistant, where Luke and Augustus visit the camel souk, came from our visit to the camel souk in Jahra, Kuwait. My short story “Mom’s Letter”, while ostensibly fiction, actually follows very closely how I learned, as a 13 year old boy, that my mother was about to die. I have captured this, and other aspects of my Rhode Island boyhood, in other poems.

I guess for me, it’s a takeoff on the old song, love the place you’re in. I do, and I hope I always will.

Engineering, expatriate life

The journey is a joy

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Today marks the 34th anniversary of beginning my first job after graduating college, so perhaps my few readers will indulge me if I make a second post today on this non-milestone anniversary.

I began work in Kansas City for Black & Veatch, one of the leading engineering firms in the nation. I remember much about that first day: the layout of the large room; the empty desk right behind my reference table, of the man who was on assignment in Duluth; the man in front and kitty corner to the front (Bill and Stan, respectively); of being told I would be drafting for the first few months (turned out to be only two), not engineering; of quickly realizing how much I didn’t know; the heat walking to and from the remote parking lot; the team across the room who flipped coins for coffee every morning about 9 AM.

I’ve had four jobs in my career, this last one lasting more than seventeen years. It would have been only two or three jobs had Iraq not invaded Kuwait in 1990, keeping me from returning to my expatriate home away from home. Most of the time the work has been pleasurable. Challenging, fulfilling, interesting, almost always giving a feeling of accomplishment. They say that if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. And I have loved the engineering I’ve done, even as the career changed. First designing wastewater treatment plants, then designing lattice-steel transmission towers, then studying water distribution systems, then designing water treatment plants and other water works, then moving into a project management/department head roll of a crew mostly designing wastewater collection systems, then designing a mixture of wastewater and water works, including an award winning reverse osmosis water treatment plant, then on a major wastewater system study and related work in a management position. And that’s just the first 17 years! After that it is a blur of design, management, new roles, much work and many hours.

My interests are slowly changing, as I tumble to a retirement that, unless plans change, is only 8 years, 6 months, and 13 days away. Writing has certainly taken over the non-engineering hours, and even sometimes the engineering ones, forcing me to work the extra hours to put in my time. When someday I write my memoirs, should any one care about them besides my most immediate family, I expect the title to be The Journey Was A Joy.