Bahrain, Egypt, France, Belgium, London, Final destination TEXAS

Happy Holidays!!!!!!!!!! I saw this for many reasons, but one of which is because being in the Middle East I never heard it. It has been a crazy week of traveling for me with 4 different countries, Bahrain, Egypt, France and now Belgium. And its only two days till I will be back home after more then six months away, I can’t wait. So we wrapped up the project in Bahrain and I headed to Egypt. I got to explore Cairo a little more in depth going to the different markets and getting to eat at my favorite Lebanese restaurant. As well as catch up with Amanda since it had been over a month since we had seen each other since I went to Bahrain and she went to Dubai.

Then I flew to Paris and had a couple of hours there, in the taxi along the way I got to see the Eiffel Tower at least from a distance. I have got to say I was a little shocked but I am told that it is much more impressive at night. But once I got to France I got to experience the cold of Europe again. While waiting on our train I was freezing and ended up looking like a bum putting on a sweater and two suit coats to try and keep warm. We arrived in Belgium after dark and had the driver at the train station waiting to take Amanda and Vivian to the company house and then me onto my hotel. I am staying at the Astoria Hotel in the heart of Brussels. http://www.sofitel.com/sofitel/fichehotel/gb/sof/1154/fiche_hotel.shtml

It is set alongside the Palace where the King of Belgium resides and numerous archechture wonders. The hotel reminds me of the classic days very similar to that of the Plaza Hotel in NYC. With huge chandeliers and gold walls and huge tapestries. I was blessed to be one of the few in the company to be staying in the hotel instead of one of the company houses. I got to get out of the hotel today and look around. The cobblestone streets that are everywhere remind you of the rich history beneath your feet and everything that you look at around you. The streets are lined with historic buildings that are still in use. Housing, offices, government buildings, and lots of art galleries and expensive jewelry and clothing stores.

New photos online at http://community.webshots.com/user/chadgriggs

I will be taking the train into Overpelt where the main office is to do my end of the year review and try and get the Bahrain project wrapped up. Then tomorrow night is my first true corporate Christmas party, kind of crazy to think about. And sticking with true tradition of the company we all got to vote on the theme and the one that won was Disco/ 70’s so it should be interesting. They have flown everyone in from around the world that works for the company for the party. It will be great getting to catch up and meet the people that I have heard so much about. I know the party will go late into the night with a bus planning on taking us back into Brussels at 3am. I have an early plane to catch on Saturday with a long lay over in London then finally I will touch down on good ol Texas soil at 6:30pm.

I feel as if I should say something intelligent now that I have been away from the US for over 6 months now again traveling the world. I am not exactly sure that there is need for a speech on this. But I will say that we are blessed with an amazing world in which we can explore. This job has been a complete blessing giving me the ability to grow, expand and learn. Meeting the different people throughout the 6 months has been the greatest blessing helping me to educate my self and begin to truly understand the different cultures and issues that people are dealing with both in a business and social sense. As we are in this Holiday Season and soo close to Christmas I am reminded that what is truly important to me is the blessing of a loving family and great friends in which we share so much. All my best to you in this Holiday season and may 2007 be greater and filled with even more blessings than 2006.

God Bless,

Chad

Kingdom of Bahrain!!!

New photos at http://community.webshots.com/user/chadgriggs

Wow it has been a while since I have written a blog sorry to those of you who are still checking up on me and seeing whats going on. I have now been in the Kingdom of Bahrain for 2 weeks. Before this I traveled to Brussels, Paris and Cairo. I had a great time once again in Cairo just hanging out and enjoying the city. We again ate at my favorite Lebanese restaurant in the entire Middle East right on the tip of the Zamalac Island jetting out into the Nile River.

Once we arrived at the airport in Bahrain we got to pick up our new company car a 2006 BMW 750. I have fallen in love with this car that has just about every option on it known to man, such as 2 cell phones (one in front one in back), mini bar, cooling and heating and massaging seats etc. We spent the rest of the day looking at different apartments. This is the new trend here in Bahrain instead of staying in hotels there are tons of different apartment building such as in any big city where everyone chooses to stay.

We finally found one we really liked. But since then we changed to the one we are at now and it is even better. Two bedrooms, three baths, plasma TV and all of the works. It makes doing business much easier in general. Plus its got a great view of the city looking out the windows of the living room that line the wall.

Our first week was busy trying to grasp a strong hold on the city and begin introducing ourselves to the network that will make our project successful here. It is really nice having Colleen as a manager especially when she is in town because she previously did a project here for Fox New York.

A little History and update of Bahrain. It is a Kingdom since 1971 when it broke off from being a colony of the UK. The Al Kalifa royal family has been here since the 1700’s and the King, Prince and (kings brother) the Prime Minister run the kingdom. They just recently went through parliamentary elections which was last weekend and has 40 seats in it. This was pretty interesting because each candidate had a tent some place in the city which were all really decked out, extremely large, with rugs on the ground, tons of chairs and couches and usually had a buffet. People came together (mainly men) every night who just seemed to hang out and talk.

The island is extremely small and is something like 400 square miles, with half of it belonging to the royal family including much of the coast line. The Kingdom is actually made up of 33 different islands but because of the bridges it seems like just one island with lots of lagoons. Where we were today was right next to the causeway which is a bridge that takes about 30 minutes to get to Saudi Arabia which you can see from the beach. It is actually pretty funny because it is literally an island with no beaches, just rocks on the shore line. The only true beach to the public is the Ritz Carleton and even that’s not really open to the public. I guess because of the conservative nature of the people there is not ever been a need for a beach. As the local women would never think about going to the beach in a swim suit etc. We are also very close to Qatar which is to the East and has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. There are current plans to build a bridge which would surpass the one in Louisiana that would take over an hour to get through. People are extremely excited about this to open up this new market for Bahrain as well as to relieve the unemployment problem here. The population is something like 800,000 and one third of that is expats mainly from Australia and Europe (for business) and a large population of South East Asians and Indians doing most of the service industry work.

Now that you got that over view – sorry. We had an unbelievable week!!!! We ended up signing two deals one of which is almost 3 times larger then any I ever have. And one large one that has been promised that will be signed next week – Enshala. So as you can tell work here as been very productive and fulfilling. That said, I worked like 24 hours a day for the past week preparing for all of the meetings that we had most of which were the kingdoms top companies. But at the end of the week we well exceeded the projects target. Which combined meet several bonuses (including a large Christmas bonus) which will help pay for the Christmas presents this year. To congratulate us the CEO of my company called and told us to go have a fancy dinner and night out on him. This made it all even better we went to an Asian Fusion restaurant that was fantastic!!! Yesterday it was extremely rainy--- I know everyone has been shocked at the rain that we are seeing here in the Middle East. So I decided to take it easy and enjoy the plasma screen TV and satellite and catch up on some reality TV “American style” that I hadn’t seen in probably 6 months. Then last night we went to dinner at this French fusion restaurant that Colleen calls the “date restaurant”. It was hilarious because the surroundings were just that candles and everything. We had only been there about 5 minutes when the rain knocks out the power and literally all we had was candle light. They got the band to stay a little latter and play some Sinatra so it ended up being a lot of fun.

Today we woke up to beautiful skies and spent the day exploring the island. We went to the bridge that goes to Saudi and the coast where we saw 50 or so wild pink flamingos (I didn’t know they actually existed in the wild). Although they were right next to one of the Royal Palaces so who knows maybe they imported them just for that. We also went driving around the Amway Islands. Which are in some of the final stages all is left is to actually build the buildings. As I am sure that you know building man made islands are very popular in the Middle East. For many reasons, the prestige, the fact of the way they can shape them from an Arial view, but also the fact that they create beach front which is generally lacking throughout the region. It was amazing seeing exactly how much man made land/islands that they had created.

Well I guess that’s all for now. We have big expectations for the coming week, both for deals and desire to meet the Crown Prince. Although we will see how everything turns up. All for now.

Chad