It's hard to believe sometimes...

But I do actually work in this building. This is an older photograph of Al Faw Palace, taken back in 2005 when I was here the first time, but the water is just as nasty now as it was then. It gets that way in the summer as the weeds have plenty of sunshine, plenty of water, and very little maintenance. The building has 3 very tall stories, and I happen to work on the ground floor. You're looking at it from the side, and my area is to the far left in the picture. If I had to guess, I'd say about under that antenna.


A couple of weeks ago, my boss came running back into the office, because he had just walked past someone he recognized from television. We get celebrities in here all the time, so I didn't
really consider it all that big a deal. But, it's late and about time to go home, work was a bit slack, so what the heck, let's go see who it is. We found Gary Sinise, here shooting some footage for his documentary on his band "Lt. Dan", in reference to the Forest Gump part he played with Tom Hanks, up on the third floor overlooking the rotunda in the Palace. Well, I climbed 3 flights of stairs, so I might as well get my picture taken with him too. A very gracious individual, and as you can see, he shook my hand for doing my part.


This last piture is looking across the rotunda from one stairwell looking at the second stairwell. This was also taken in 2005, and today looks very
different because they put flourescent bulbs in in place of the incandescent ones. It's much less red now, and far brighter. Everything is marble, and the lighting is all very gaudy crystal chandeliers. Angie has one of the crystals that happened to fall from one of them. I also brought home one very similar from another palace, obviously put up in about the same timeframe from the same construction vendor.