I'm back

We came back 2 days ago after a full month in Tunisia. As usual, the last minutes at the airport were very sad for all us, tears were on everyone's face and it was tough for the kids to leave their loving and friendly cousins, neighbors and friends for a country where they have only few friends. But what amazed me is that as soon as we cleared the police and found ourselves together, everybody was happy and excited to go back and we cheered ourseleves up. I guess that is one skill set that only long time immigrant have :-)
This summer, was not the best summer we have for my wife and me. The kids had a great time though and we bareley saw them during this month, they were all the day with my brother's kids or a cousin or an uncle or one of our neighbors kids. This is the only period of the year when they can come home at 2:00 AM in the morning.
My wife had some health issues in the last 2 weeks that prevented us from leaving home but we managed to have some parties that kept us busy.
For me it was a bummer, since there was an issue with one of our biggest customers that occured during the second week of my vacation. This issue got mentionned in the weekly executive meeting and my EVP panicked and called asking me to come back for a few days. I tried to work on it remotely from our distributor in Tunis but they did not have enough infrastructre for me to do that, and since this guy did not seem to give up, I told him the best I can do is to go to our european HQ in Paris for a few days but going back to the US is not an option.
Anyway, I had to travel to Paris for a full 4 days of work, managing a few hours of sleep as I have to deal with my team in the US and another in India, it was a nightmare !!!
Apart of these few mishaps in was great, I managed to spend 2 nights fishing near klibia and I went with one of my friend for half a day of tuna fishing on small motorboat he has in Marina. I even did some diving the first week.
I did not check this blog since I left. I ordered ADSL in our house in Hammamet and they told me it will take 2 days, so I paid a quarter of subscriptions due and took the router and installed it and waited. After 3 days still no sync, I call Topnet, they tell me that theydid their part and that I have to call Tunisie Telecom, I did and they kept telling me the famous "Tomorrow inshallah". Actually, to the day I left we did not have ADSL!!! In the meantime I called a friend of mine at TT and he confirmed that they have a problem in South Hammamet that won't be fixed before a month!! Anyway,even when I was in Paris I did not have time to check the Blogosphere, so I have a lot of catching to do.

So in summary not a so great vacation but a day spent in Tunisia with friends and family is worth a month here in California :-).