Wings and Rugby

Another busy week in the books. Thursday and Friday, Dan taught trainings at the office for the better part of the morning. Friday, I ran some errands to top up the electricity and go on a wild goose chase hunting down dishwasher tablets... for which we have now checked four stores and no one has any... weird.

Friday night we wanted to go out for a bite but wanted to try somewhere new. Recently, just on the other side of the US Embassy, a new wing place opened up. It's called Lord of the Wings... see what they did there? The menu is sizable and seems to be a knock-off of Buffalo Wild Wings in the States. They have a few different types of wings and then 15 or so different sauces. Now, this is Ghana where spicy food is a big thing. So we decided to try a few different sauces and Dan stuck around the middle of the heat scale. His thought process was that given Ghana spice, anything labeled as spicy would be tear-up-your-insides/smoke-out-your-ears spicy. The wings came and while tasty, there was no kick at all, which left us a little disappointed. Oh well. You live and you learn. At least it's a walking distance place for a decent meal and a beer after a busy day.

Saturday we had plans to meet up with some of Dan's coworkers to watch the Rugby World Cup semifinal of South Africa v. New Zealand. The pub is really close to this clothing store I've been wanting to check out so we left a little early to go there. It's called Brown Sugar and they have really cute clothes on their website and in the window (very American looking). We went in and the place is pretty small but they do have quite a bit of inventory. I was pretty disappointed to learn that all the clothes I thought were cute and could wear in the States were... actually from the States. I would say half the inventory is called Forever XXI Contemporary. Now I have no idea what the Contemporary line is or how it differs from standard Forever XXI, but I cannot justify paying $60 for a dress that is from there. For that price, there are many better-made options in the States so I suppose I'll set aside my shopping desires until I get back to the homeland in a few weeks.

The rugby group was fun: me, Dan, Veronica, Noks (wearing her South Africa rugby shirt), Janni, and "white Joe". White Joe requires differentiation as we ran into "Teddy Bear Joe" who is Ghanaian and was also at the pub watching soccer. Unfortunately, SA lost to the All Blacks but kept the score close which is an impressive showing given New Zealand's dominance in the sport. There was a promotion for Carlsberg beer that you got free swag if you drank so many beers. Given there were quite a few of us and we were there for 3 hours, much swag was procured. I think by the end we had 3 shirts, two hats, and two coffee thermoses amongst the table.

After rugby, we got some last minute groceries and came home. Hannah and Robin came over for dinner but we were all pretty exhausted by 10:30 or so. Watched a little college football an then hit the hay. There's a game at Wembley in England today so NFL watching starts a little earlier than usual in our house. Looking forward to another Fall Sunday!

First No-Travel Month... in awhile

Think about it... it's really been quite some time since we've had a full calendar month without a suitcase. Jan-Mar: Mozambique, Apr: Morocco/England, May: Safari in South Africa, June/July: Ethiopia/Tanzania, Aug: Dubai/Cairo, and Sep: SF/Munich. It's been incredible. We wouldn't change a moment of it. That said, having all of October to lounge around and catch up with friends and life here in Ghana has been lovely.

Things are looking very late-October-y (you like that made up word?) around here. The Halloween decorations have blended in to appear like normal house decor, weekend evenings are filled with football of both the NCAA and NFL varieties, the teddy bear business is booming in preparation for the holidays and we're just about a week and a half away from Dan's 30th birthday.

The last couple weeks have been very average. We've both had some busy work weeks culminating in many quiet evenings at home with dinners and DVR dates. We went out to dinner a few times with friends including a positively hilarious night with Hannah and Robin. We went to a French restaurant. Admittedly, we had wine at their house before we went so all four of us were feeling quite loose. We weren't sure of the dress code so Dan called to see if he could wear shorts. They said no, so we had to swing by the house for him to change into jeans. H & R were hounding him and giving him a time limit. He was taking a really long time and we couldn't figure out why. Finally, he appears back at the car in a full suit... apparently he really took the no shorts thing to heart.

Sitting at the restaurant, Robin wanted us all to speak in sub-par French accents through dinner, which no one else was really chomping at the bit to do. So then he decided we should give each other a character to act out until the next course arrived. We got to pick out the character for the person to our left. We'll just cut to the chase and say Dan won... or maybe I won depending on how you look at it since I picked his character. I told him he was Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. I was actually crying at the table. He starts subtley rocking back and forth stroking his left arm and saying (in the perfect voice) things like: "There's three pieces of bread. Three pieces of bread." "You had wine but now you don't. You need more wine." Suffice to say, no one else even attempted their character because we were a) too busy laughing and b) well aware of the fact that we couldn't beat him.

I apologize that our lives haven't been particularly exciting in the last few weeks, and, as a result, my posts are less entertaining. But, hopefully, the mental picture of this story was enough to put a smile on your face.

Tax Away Day 2015 - Part 2

Sorry for missing Thursday's post. Dan is teaching several trainings over the next week or so, thus he was "too busy" to write the second half of the Away Day Recap... But, without further ado...

Post Games:

Ghanaian food for lunch (prepared by the hotel, not me).  Then, nap time for me. Nap time lasted about 90 minutes.  Then, the plan was to have dance practice and get ready for the evening event.

Oh yeah, dance practice.  So, the planning committee decided that we should do a performance at the end of the evening event and to kickstart the party.  Obviously, this wasn’t a unanimous vote.  But, being the gifted dancer that I am, I was not that upset when the majority agreed to do a dance.  The dances were to Uptown Funk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPf0YbXqDm0) - which I’m sure all readers have heard on the radio – and Shake Body (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qoUU4onORY).  Given my proclivity to “feeling the rhythm,” I’m pretty confident I looked just like the dancers in the second video. 

Anyway, the plan was dance practice then get ready for the evening event.

Unfortunately, lots of things were running on Ghana time (i.e., not on time).  As a result, dance practice turned out to include helping finish setting up the venue and dealing with other issues.  Most notably, power. 

“Daniel, we have a problem.”

“Okay…”

“I’m being told by the technician that we don’t have enough voltage”

“Like power?”

“Yes please.  You see the lights? They’re already going out”

“Okay, so who do I need to talk to?”

“The technician is over there”

“Yo, boss, I hear we have a power problem”

“Yes, someone should have talked to me!”

I then took a bit of berating for the next minute or so.

“Alright, well are there any solutions?”

“We can add another power source”

“Okay, lets do that then”

After talking to a few more people, power issue = troubleshot.

Evening program:

 So the evening program was scheduled to start at 6.  People would arrive, take pictures, grab a drink, then have dinner at 7.  Dinner was a wide variety of food that was as close to “island” or “Hawaiian Luau” as we could get.  We had about 30 roasted chickens and 2 whole goats that were on a rotisserie.  Not quite a pig roast, but we did what we could.

In Ghana time, that means people started to arrive at 7PM and dinner starts at 8PM.  This actually worked out well because while I was dealing with last minute items, I was still in workout clothes.  In fact, when people were taking their pictures and selfies, you can find me in the background of quite a few still in my work out clothes…an interesting contrast to the fancy dress of everyone else. 

But, like most events, everyone will have a good time regardless of the little things that go wrong.  Obviously, I’m a little torn up that the drink umbrellas didn’t make it out, but I don’t think it ruined the atmosphere. 

As some readers may know, Ghanaians generally do not drink alcohol.  When budgeting for the party, we assumed there were about 7 (out of 60 people) who would drink alcohol and we bought beer/wine/liquor accordingly.  Part of that budget was 2 bottles of Johnny Walker Gold Label.  Even among 7 people, that’s a decent amount.

At approximately 10:30, the bartender informs me that the Gold Label is out.  I tell him to open up the second bottle and he informs me that is gone as well.  I look around and none of the 7 drinkers are passed out, so I tell him to get another one from the hotel bar.

At about 11, the bartender informs me that the Gold Label is out, again.  Now I’m starting to realize that a lot of these non-drinking-Ghanaians are having a little extra fun.  I go ahead and tell him to bring two more from the hotel bar.  Neither of which made it home with us.

The whole evening lasted until about 1:30AM, and then Gabby and I hosted an after party until about 3AM.

Since pictures are worth a thousand words, here’s a few thousand-word essay on the rest of the events.  I will note that none of the pictures after 11:30PM (aka, after 5 bottles of whiskey) were shared amongst the group:

Me presenting Gabby with the Hardest Partier award

Video of dance done by Senior Managers:

Tax Away Day 2015 - Part 1

So about this time last year, I was in a bit of a dilemma.  I had to pick a roommate for the Tax Away Day.  I barely knew anyone, and, despite me being awesome, people didn’t know that yet.  (click here for recap)

This year was a bit different.  This year, people know I’m awesome and I was involved as member of the planning committee.  This year, people wanted to hangout and take pictures with me – and not just because I’m the white guy.  So, without further ado, here’s the recap:

Venue:

Aqua Safari in Ada.  You can even Google it! This place has a bit of an infamous history.  A famous Ghanaian rapper, Castro, disappeared while on vacation here.  This might not seem like a significant loss to American readers, but here’s one of his song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxD3GNltmV0 

Now that you’ll be humming or singing that for the rest of the day, (probably embarrassed if/when you’re picking out produce at the grocery store and a black person walks by) you can appreciate the significance of the loss.

The place itself is a measure of extremes.  One can tell that it used to be a shit hole.  However, management has gradually been investing $$$ in upgrading it.  What does that mean? It means my room has granite counters, but a shower head that’s fallen off.  It means my room has a 40-inch flat screen, but my ass can feel every spring in the couch. 

Planning:

As I mentioned before, I was part of the planning committee.

One of the partners casually suggested Aqua Safari, and since it’s coming out of their pockets, that pretty much means we have to go to Aqua Safari (shucks).  In coming up with a theme for the night, I had two ideas.  The first was Monte Carlo/Casino themed.  People love dressing up and love prizes, so this would cover both.  The one problem? No one knows how to gamble.  Idea scratched.

My second idea, Hawaiian luau.  Do Africans actually know what that is?  It turns out, they do.  Everyone loved the idea and, thankfully, everyone agreed that we should not require coconut bras for the girls and guys should keep their shirts on.  However, the committee decided to put a bit of a twist on it and make it an All White party.  No, that doesn’t mean I’m the only one that gets invited, it means people had to wear all white clothing.  The plan being, everyone wears all white clothes and we have leis and decorations that are colorful and create a nice contrast. 

My primary roles were: smuggler and troubleshooter.  Being a smuggler really just involves having a US passport, Amazon prime, cool in-laws, and a big enough suitcase.  I think all I need is a tall furry friend, a vest, and blaster pistol and I’ll be just like Han Solo. 

Given Hawaii is part of the Greatest Country On Earth; I was in the best position to procure leis, drink umbrellas and other Hawaiian themed merchandise. More on my role as troubleshooter later.

The head of the planning committee was Gabby.  Obviously no one reading this has ever met Gabby and therefore doesn’t have the appreciation required.  Gabby is Kenyan.  That means Gabby typically parties till the sunrise.  Not surprisingly, Gabby won the Hardest Partier award at the Tax Away Day.  I came in second place (sorry, Mom).

Games:

Fortunately, for my safety, health and well being (but unfortunately for readers) there were no games that involved sharp objects being thrust at coworkers.  Instead, one of the premier games we came up with was Mine Field.  The general idea was that this involved blindfolding a team member and having them cross an area of beach covered by water balloons (i.e., mines).  In order to effectively cross the minefield without stepping on the water balloons, other team members would shout instructions to those blindfolded.  Cool, yes? We thought so too.  Unfortunately, we didn’t think about the logistics of filling water balloons. 

As we got closer to the day, we realized that these water balloons would take a lot of effort to fill.  As a result, (first problem to troubleshoot) this required Gabby and me to go up to Aqua Safari the night before in order to get started on preparations.  We left Accra at 11PM and arrived at the venue on 12:30AM.  Three hours later, we had 100 water balloons filled and other miscellaneous tasks completed.

The rest of the team (about 60) arrived the next morning.  The games began immediately and anticipation was high amongst Gabby, me, and the planning committee about the minefield game.  Unfortunately, what took us 3 hours to prepare, was far too easy.  People crossed our minefield in less than 20 seconds.  The game was over in about a minute.  Oh well.  Lesson learned.

As this post is quite lengthy already, we will pause here for suspense and finish the remainder in the next post.

Fall Happenings

It's been a busy week and a half since we returned from Germany. We got home on a Thursday and, after some laundry and grocery shopping, we got right back into the swing of things. Friday, we went to work and then went over to Alex and Sam's that night for a wine and cheese party. There were maybe 10 of us that went and it was a really good time. Leonora had brought a bunch of cheese back after her last trip home to England so she was pleased to share her bounty with the group. Dan and I brought a few bottles of wine. The girls chatted on the couch and the guys played games at the dining room table. After we ran out of goodies, everyone piled into the truck and Asare drove the clan over to Burger and Relish for more games and fun.

After the fun of Friday night, suffice to say Saturday was a lazy afternoon of recuperation. Between all our travel, jet lag, and fun with friends, it was a much needed day of soccer, college football and lounging. Sunday was our first week of NFL that we were both home together to enjoy. We charted fantasy teams and yelled at Red Zone and ordered pizza delivery for dinner. It was the perfect opening weekend to our fall football Sundays at home.

The next work week was fairly uneventful except that Dan had his "Tax Away Day" with his team on Thursday night into Friday. He was part of the party planning committee and it sounds like it was a really good time, but more on that later as he's putting together a post with photos and the details of the whole event. While he was away on Thursday night, I hosted a girls night. Unfortunately, Hannah came down with a migraine and Alex had to work late so it was just me, Leonora and Katerina. That said, we had a really nice time. I made some dinner and we had some wine and just sat on the couch and chatted for awhile.

Dan returned on Friday afternoon and we had a quiet dinner at home. After dinner, we went to Bread and Wine for some live music with an American couple. We had some wine but didn't stay out very late as Dan was exhausted from his trip with his coworkers. Saturday afternoon we picked up Janni, the PwC expat from Denmark, and took a cab out to Tema. Dorothy and Albert's twin boys were turning 4 so we were invited to their party. The house was full of energy from kids running around and parents shouting at the soccer matches on TV. Lots of food was prepared so we certainly got our share of lunch/dinner. The cutting of the cake was a fiasco as Dorothy tried to line up all the kids for a photo and everyone kept sticking their fingers in the icing.

All in all it was a really good day... which was topped off by a FANTASTIC Gator football game. (Just had to sneak that in there as we completely and utterly dismantled the #3 team in the country.) Sunday was the "usual" with a couples workout in the living room, an early NFL game being broadcast from London and more lounging on the couch shouting at our fantasy players.

That brings us to a new week. Pretty quiet so far but we've both been a little busy with work so that's understandable. Hard to believe we're quickly working through October already. Before we know it we will be back in the US enjoying Thanksgiving with both sets of our parents!!! Yay!

Germany - Part 2 - IAA Car Show

The flight back to Accra from Germany goes through Frankfurt... an airport hub so large that it makes DFW look like Champaign airport. We got a hotel room for one night in Frankfurt so that we wouldn't have to worry about the train running late or stressing about possibly missing our flight. Given the current migrant situation in Germany, that was our intelligent plan.

After booking everything, Dan was researching things to do that one day in Frankfurt to decide how long we should stay in Munich before heading up to Frankfurt. He found out that one of the largest car show's in Europe, IAA, was taking place literally next door to our hotel and asked if we could go. Sure why not?

Now to be fair, I've been to one, count it, one, car show in my days (that I'm old enough to recall) and it was in San Francisco. I found it interesting and it was cool to get to sit in the cars and compare different brands in the same room. Yeah... Frankfurt's was HUGE. It was at a convention center with 11 different exhibit halls, not including two massive structures in the middle of the center: one housing Mercedes-Benz and the other housing Audi. (Side Note: BMW had all of Hall 11 which wasn't small either but didn't get the front row treatment that the other two garnered).

Certainly the focus was on the German cars but there were other European cars for sure. Also, a small selection of Japanese cars and one section for Ford (haha, snub the US...). They had plenty of food stands and lots of Beck's draft tents, because, Germany. We roamed all the halls and sat in a few vehicles. We marveled at the crazy concept cars by Porsche and the beautiful McLaren and Honda NSX.

Mercedes had a screen the size of an entire wall that opened into panels. They drove out the cars through the panels to show everyone the fleet. They also had two models of their Formula 1 car driven by Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton available for viewing. Audi had cars mounted on the walls and showed the progression of the car models over the years. Out behind the convention center was the off-roading course with the big hills, crazy inclines, etc.

Ferrari/Mercedes Formula 1 Vehicle

Porsche Concept Car/Showroom inside Audi Building

It started to drizzle so we went back to the hotel, had a nap and went down to the hotel bar/restaurant for dinner and some soccer. We got some sleep and then awoke to head to the airport to make our way back to Ghana after another great vacation.

Germany Part 1 - Oktoberfest

We arrived in Munich around 5pm on Monday evening... just in time to get caught in traffic of people trying to go home from work or meander over to the festival for a liter of beer after a day at the office. Took us quite some time to get to the hotel but the room was spacious, for European standards so we quickly showered off the airplane smell and decided to roam over to check out the happenings.

Monday night's intention was just to get an idea of what this whole thing is about. I knew from photographs that there was a ferris wheel and maybe some other rides but I wasn't expecting the grounds to be as big as they were. They were easily twice the size of what I imagined. We were warned by friends who have attended in years past that it's almost impossible to get into a tent if you weren't there first thing in the morning.

Given that advice, we found a small beer stand off to the side and grabbed a beer and kind of surveyed the land. There are a ton of carnival rides and games that are all over the grounds, mixed in with these absolutely massive beer halls. Each big tent is sponsored by a different German brewery and most of them serve one particular brew in their tent, which is their brewery's Oktoberfest offering and you cannot get it anywhere else. After our beer, we went roaming around to find an ATM. Every one we found was out of cash but we were walking past one of the big tents and Dan noticed there was one inside. Expecting to have to haggle with the bouncer to get in the door, I offered to wait outside as "collateral". Dan walked right by and the guy didn't even look at him, so I did the same and Voila! we were in a tent.

This particular tent was really busy, so we decided to check out a few others before choosing a place to settle down for some dinner. We went to the next tent and asked one of the servers for a table for two, so she took us upstairs. We were looking at the menu when we realized... we had stumbled into the one wine tent that Oktoberfest offers. Dan found this particularly amusing as we then noticed all the  decor was grapes. We sat down, had a bottle of chilled German Reisling and some dinner... roasted chicken, with potato salad and a massive pretzel.

Our dinner and a quick picture from the second floor of the Weinzelt tent

Post-dinner beer

After dinner and wine, we figured we should find some beer so went over to Festzelt and posted up at a table with some nice Canadian guys. We chatted for awhile and then parted ways around 10pm as we were exhausted from our travel. We didn't sleep well at all and were awake at all sorts of crazy hours so our alarm at 9am was not particularly enjoyable. We had breakfast, threw on lederhosen and a beer maiden dress and walked back to the festival.

There was one particular tent that was on my "must-see" list. I've seen so many photos of it and I just needed to see it in person, so we went there first. We got another delicious "base pretzel" to line the bellies before the beer and got the day started. By maybe 11am, people were standing on tables chugging liters of beer while the rest of the tent cheered them on... these people don't mess around. We shared a table with two German girls and two guys from Texas. The table behind us was a whole group of young people from Switzerland so we were having a good time. So good, in fact, that we totally lost track of time and laughed that Oktoberfest is like Vegas where you have not the slightest clue what hour it is. Around 1pm, we decided to go next door to Hofbrauhaus's Tent.

Our tablemates here weren't nearly as much fun but the atmosphere was still worth experiencing. It's funny how much the decor inside each tent changes it's entire ambiance even though they are the same size. We finished our beers and decided to head back to the hotel for some naps.

 My fave tent - Hacker Festzelt/Tired Dan and the "base pretzel"

Silly pictures/Silly hat/Hofbrauhaus Tent 

 After our naps, we noticed it was raining (good thing we came home when we did), so we borrowed an umbrella from the front desk and set out in search of a dinner spot. We found a German restaurant/bar that was showing soccer and had dinner there. I had weinerschnitzel, and Dan had veal medallions with a sausage/sauerkraut starter... very German of us. After dinner, we walked back through the rain to the hotel and tried to get some rest before our early train to Frankfurt the next morning.

All in all, Oktoberfest was a blast. I'm not sure you need more than maybe 2 full days there... nor do I think that would be the best decision for one's liver. That said, I'm so glad we went and it was definitely a worthwhile experience that we would recommend.