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)