Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

Even worse, "Kee Ma" can mean either "ride (a) horse" or
"dog ****" depending on the tone used.


Wow...what a mess. Iran is a mix of languages that have intermingled,
too. Persian (Farsi) has lots of street slang used every day, even in
the best of company, that has infiltrated the language. The Kurds live
all over Tehran, and their language is so different even the Iranians
can't understand them. Most Kurds speak Farsi, but resist it as a
matter of Kurdish pride. We had a guy that came with the new apartment
building. He was a huge Kurdish man, about 40-something I'd guess. His
Farsi was worse than mine but he and I managed to communicate in it.
The Iranians used to tell me my Farsi sounded like Kurdish, I think
because of it...hee hee. I must have caught some accent. His favorite
words upon seeing us arrive from the base all hot and sweaty was "Ab,
Niche!", NO WATER, to take a shower. Fed up with that, 3 of us found a
huge commercial water pump noone wanted on the base and brought it home,
plumbing it into the furnace room next to the big fuel-oil-fired hot
water heater. (Fuel oil was about 2.2 US cents per litre from a guy
with an open tank on a pickup you had to measure with a stick and
negotiate price.) We literally sucked the water out of the Tehran water
system after that and had plenty of pressure, about 70PSI. No more, "Ab
Niche". The big Kurdish guy, whos name I've forgotten but did know,
thought we were geniuses. He sprayed water over the lawn for weeks
afterward. He cut our lawn with shears by hand. It looked like a
putting green. We felt sorry for him living in our garage and he was
very handy for carting anything upstairs for tips, so we brought home a
truckload of Air Force plywood and built him a room in the garage he
heated with his little oil stove and slept on his prayer rug, praying 5
times a day. NOONE, and I mean NOONE, ever thought about stealing
anything with this huge Kurd in his silk pajamas, the only clothes I
ever saw him in, standing guard by the front lawn. The little thieves
gave him a wide berth.

I loved Iran. I'd go back in a heartbeat. Iranians don't hate
Americans, they hate our Zionist government...and know the difference.
Whenever confronted I used to tell them I had as much control over the
US Government as they did the Shahanshah. That always defused any
misplaced hatred quickly. Working for the Shah, with my military ID as
an "engineer" was like a passport to the country. We were very accepted
as part of Iran, not as foreigners because of the soldiers on the base,
conscripts for 2 years, that told the people how wonderful we were and
that the Air Force couldn't survive without us. I ate breakfast in the
Army mess tent with those kids almost every morning. Iranian flat bread
full of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, shaved beef from a vertical
broiler, loaded with butter and rolled into a burrito. Pak milk to
drink (Cow's milk from the Pak Milk Company. The Shah bought a whole
dairy package from America in Florida one trip. Milk was one of his
favorites so milk was very plentiful and very cheap, like the cheeses
the Shah loved. We ate the finest French cheese for pennies on the
dollar. Cheese was everywhere in the food stores.

Speaking of grocery stores, have you ever seen Barf in a box?....(c;]

The first time I saw it I just had to laugh. An Englishman noticed I
was new and told me why. Barf means snow in Farsi. I sent my mother a
big box of Barf. She was afraid to open it...hee hee. There are other
crazy language comparisons to English like that. I dated, then lived
with, an English teacher from Christchurch whos name was Anne, nothing
funny about that, until you get to Iran! In Farsi, Ann means ****! I
learned very quickly to never call out her name in a crowded Iranian
restaurant....(c;] There'd be gasps all around, then, after we
explained that was her name in English, there'd be hooting and
laughter....before my outburst got us thrown out...(c;]

It's like an Englishman coming to America and telling Americans he's
****ed...a totally different meaning here...hee hee.

--
Creationism is to science what storks are to obstetrics...

Larry

On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:17:15 +0000, Larry wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

Even worse, "Kee Ma" can mean either "ride (a) horse" or
"dog ****" depending on the tone used.


Wow...what a mess. Iran is a mix of languages that have intermingled,
too. Persian (Farsi) has lots of street slang used every day, even in
the best of company, that has infiltrated the language. The Kurds live
all over Tehran, and their language is so different even the Iranians
can't understand them. Most Kurds speak Farsi, but resist it as a
matter of Kurdish pride. We had a guy that came with the new apartment
building. He was a huge Kurdish man, about 40-something I'd guess. His
Farsi was worse than mine but he and I managed to communicate in it.
The Iranians used to tell me my Farsi sounded like Kurdish, I think
because of it...hee hee. I must have caught some accent. His favorite
words upon seeing us arrive from the base all hot and sweaty was "Ab,
Niche!", NO WATER, to take a shower. Fed up with that, 3 of us found a
huge commercial water pump noone wanted on the base and brought it home,
plumbing it into the furnace room next to the big fuel-oil-fired hot
water heater. (Fuel oil was about 2.2 US cents per litre from a guy
with an open tank on a pickup you had to measure with a stick and
negotiate price.) We literally sucked the water out of the Tehran water
system after that and had plenty of pressure, about 70PSI. No more, "Ab
Niche". The big Kurdish guy, whos name I've forgotten but did know,
thought we were geniuses. He sprayed water over the lawn for weeks
afterward. He cut our lawn with shears by hand. It looked like a
putting green. We felt sorry for him living in our garage and he was
very handy for carting anything upstairs for tips, so we brought home a
truckload of Air Force plywood and built him a room in the garage he
heated with his little oil stove and slept on his prayer rug, praying 5
times a day. NOONE, and I mean NOONE, ever thought about stealing
anything with this huge Kurd in his silk pajamas, the only clothes I
ever saw him in, standing guard by the front lawn. The little thieves
gave him a wide berth.

I loved Iran. I'd go back in a heartbeat. Iranians don't hate
Americans, they hate our Zionist government...and know the difference.
Whenever confronted I used to tell them I had as much control over the
US Government as they did the Shahanshah. That always defused any
misplaced hatred quickly. Working for the Shah, with my military ID as
an "engineer" was like a passport to the country. We were very accepted
as part of Iran, not as foreigners because of the soldiers on the base,
conscripts for 2 years, that told the people how wonderful we were and
that the Air Force couldn't survive without us. I ate breakfast in the
Army mess tent with those kids almost every morning. Iranian flat bread
full of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, shaved beef from a vertical
broiler, loaded with butter and rolled into a burrito. Pak milk to
drink (Cow's milk from the Pak Milk Company. The Shah bought a whole
dairy package from America in Florida one trip. Milk was one of his
favorites so milk was very plentiful and very cheap, like the cheeses
the Shah loved. We ate the finest French cheese for pennies on the
dollar. Cheese was everywhere in the food stores.

Speaking of grocery stores, have you ever seen Barf in a box?....(c;]

The first time I saw it I just had to laugh. An Englishman noticed I
was new and told me why. Barf means snow in Farsi. I sent my mother a
big box of Barf. She was afraid to open it...hee hee. There are other
crazy language comparisons to English like that. I dated, then lived
with, an English teacher from Christchurch whos name was Anne, nothing
funny about that, until you get to Iran! In Farsi, Ann means ****! I
learned very quickly to never call out her name in a crowded Iranian
restaurant....(c;] There'd be gasps all around, then, after we
explained that was her name in English, there'd be hooting and
laughter....before my outburst got us thrown out...(c;]

It's like an Englishman coming to America and telling Americans he's
****ed...a totally different meaning here...hee hee.


Did you ever know a fellow named "Jim Wright" while in Iran? He worked
on the radar site project and must have been somewhere on the power
production side of the project, Certainly not on the electronic? Drank
a lot, and fairly continuously all day. It would have been, say 1975 -
1977, about that period.

He worked for us in Indonesia, off and on, but we finally had to let
him go as his drinking reached the point that he couldn't function
after lunch.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

Did you ever know a fellow named "Jim Wright" while in Iran? He worked
on the radar site project and must have been somewhere on the power
production side of the project, Certainly not on the electronic? Drank
a lot, and fairly continuously all day. It would have been, say 1975 -
1977, about that period.

He worked for us in Indonesia, off and on, but we finally had to let
him go as his drinking reached the point that he couldn't function
after lunch.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)



Sorry. The time is wrong. I was there at the end, 77-79. I don't
remember hearing that name. I made my own power for the lab. We had
air-cooled Deutz diesels driving big overkill generators for stable
power with some serious underground tankage. I ended up in the electric
company business on the side as the base power at Doshen-Tappeh wasn't
anything to brag home about...(c;] More load and circuits kept being
added on as the place would be in the dark...except for my lab standing
out like a lighthouse in the dark...hee hee.

We'd walk out of the lab into total darkness...not good. "You boys
wanna run a drop cord to one of my gensets? I got a couple of hundred
KW we're not usin'.", I'd quip.

Deutz makes great prime movers, albeit a little noisy for a boat being
air cooled with that monster fan blowing air over the cylinder jugs....a
hot diesel is a happy diesel!



--
Global Warming and Creationism are to science what storks are to
obstetrics...

Larry

On Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:24:05 +0000, Larry wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

Did you ever know a fellow named "Jim Wright" while in Iran? He worked
on the radar site project and must have been somewhere on the power
production side of the project, Certainly not on the electronic? Drank
a lot, and fairly continuously all day. It would have been, say 1975 -
1977, about that period.

He worked for us in Indonesia, off and on, but we finally had to let
him go as his drinking reached the point that he couldn't function
after lunch.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)



Sorry. The time is wrong. I was there at the end, 77-79. I don't
remember hearing that name. I made my own power for the lab. We had
air-cooled Deutz diesels driving big overkill generators for stable

Both Jim and I had finished a contract and were in Bangkok. I had a
firm offer, "just as soon as we sigh the contract" and Jim was
looking. He signed on with the outfit that was building the mountain
top radar? radio? stations. Being a good guy he had taken my resume
along and dropped copies all over town.

Well, they signed the contract and off I went to Irian Jaya and when I
came back on my first break I found several telegrams wanting me to
leave right away to work for the Helicopter people in Teheran. The
telegrams were sort of graduated - the first one was an invitation to
come on over, the next offered more money and said let them know and
they's send a ticket and the last one said that if I didn't want to
come at least have the decency to let them know. Which I did. Wrote a
nice letter telling them that as I hadn't heard from them I had
accepted a job in Indonesia and maybe we could do something later. Of
course, there was no later for those guys :-(


So, I went back to Indonesia and never went to Persia...

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

the Helicopter people in Teheran.

One of my friends in Iran was Ed Outhouse (yes, that's his name...(c
Ed and I got involved with the AMVETS Iran-American Club, a beautiful
multi-story facility owned by some really rich Iranians who also owned
several big theatres in town. I was a projectionist and had installed
many projection systems in theatres back in the States, so when he found
that out he took me to the club's owners and we made a deal that Ed and
I were to install an exclusive little club theatre for about 100 patrons
in a big room on one of the floors formerly used as a ballroom.

We installed it all and I ordered the equipment from Charlotte, NC, USA
from an old friend who was a projection engineer from the local theatre
supply company. "You're where?!", Tip said to me.....very funny. He'd
never heard of Iran, now he was getting calls from it....

The theatre was a great success! Our first feature film was the new
"Star Wars" which had just been released but was not yet playing in Iran
to massive crowds a week later....after I took the movie back to the
movie theatre originally destined to play it in Farsi. The English
original sound track played if you played the film track optically
(35mm) and the Farsi dubbing company, also owned by one of the owners of
the club, painted a flexible magnetic track over one of the two optical
sound tracks where the Farsi translation was played by Iranian actors.
Film has two sound tracks for a reason. Two tracks gives us the
opportunity to mostly eliminate any scratches in the film from making a
big pop on the speakers. The audio is a combination of both tracks and
any differences in the tracks must be imperfections and scratches which
are nulled out. Each track is the exact opposite of the other, phase
wise. But with one track covered up, it made our job of playing the
original optical track left a little tricky and a bit noisy if the print
was dirty or scratched or spliced too much. Noone complained. They
were thrilled. Ed and I got honorary membership, worth about $US8000 at
the time with full memberships to keep us happy. I spent two nights a
week running films noone else in Iran ever saw from all over the world.
Some very important people in Tehran knew me from our little theatre
association. Films appeared in the booth, no questions to be asked....
(c;] I did some projection engineering at a couple of the club owners'
theatres, too, on the side. One theatre got a whole new stereo sound
system at my recommendations. It worked great! 16 huge speakers hidden
over the entire theatre, Iran's first surround sound....

I lost track of Ed, who worked for Bell Helicopter, whom I assume you
were referring to. They had a nice house with a walled garden quite a
ways up the mountain Tehran is built into....a very nice neighborhood
compared to mine down in the main city. We had a great friendship for
the time I was in country.

--
Global Warming and Creationism are to science what storks are to
obstetrics...

Larry