Neal Of Arabia

The End

2008-01-06T01:53:00.000+03:00

And so, after two years, it is time to put Neal Of Arabia to bed. I am no longer living in Riyadh, and no longer a Diplomatic Spouse, so it's off to blogging pastures new. Our two years in Riyadh were a great adventure and we made friends with some lovely people. This blog will remain available for anyone who wants to catch up on our adventures during 2006/7, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So where next for my typing fingers? Well, it's a new version of Bloody Marvellous! : the other blog I started while in Riyadh, but had to stop updating because it all got a bit much. The "new and improved" version is at http://bloodymarvellous.wordpress.com. I do hope you will join me there.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO MY NEW BLOG

Ma'asalama.

Back To The Grind

2008-01-02T13:28:00.000+03:00

With Christmas and the New Year holiday over it's time for us -- as I'm sure it is for you -- to get back into work mode and return to regular routines. Today is also Karen's first day in her new job in London, so I guess it's also the day I officially cease being a Diplomatic Spouse and resume my previous life as Nobody In Particular.

So I'm sitting here in our rented flat, catching up with emails and writing a To-Do list, while also trying to think of a name for the new blog and managing the childrens' activities, namely making sure Elliot does some revision for the exams he has waiting for him when he goes back to school, and getting Abigail out of bed.

I'm also looking forward to moving into our new home in London next week, and starting to think that there are probably another hundred things I should be doing in preparation for that, but as yet unidentified.

Still, I have my new Slingbox firing on all cylinders and I can access it from anywhere on the internet, so I'm happy on a geek level at least. Take a look at the videos on their website if you want to be cheered up; they're very funny.

Damn! I just noticed that my header graphic has moved several pixels to the right for no apparent reason, and is now sticking out from its background area. I'll make a note on my To-Do list:

Do some work.
Get Elliot to revise.
Wake Abigail up.
Think up name for new blog.
Identify the hundred things I need to do about the move between now and next Friday.
Fix the blog header.

Happy New Year!

Moving On

2007-12-30T12:51:00.000+03:00

I had a great Christmas break, and I hope you did too (if you celebrate it). My favourite present was -- needless to say -- a gadget. The Slingbox is a smart little box that you connect up to form a link between your TV content (Satellite receiver, cable box etc.) and your broadband internet connection. This, in effect, "posts" your TV on the internet, enabling you to watch your own TV or recorded programmes from any internet-connected computer. Pretty cool for those who travel on business and have to endure hours of American TV in hotel rooms. Now instead, you can boot up your laptop and watch Coronation St, or the big Premiership match.

Anyway, time to get to the point. Since Christmas I've been thinking about what to do with the blog. It seems incongruous to me to continue with a blog called "Neal of Arabia: Life as a Diplomatic Spouse..." when I am no longer in Saudi, and actually no longer a Diplomatic Spouse either, since Karen's Diplomatic status is only in effect when she's serving overseas. All of which suggests that it's time to move on, blog-wise.

It is with mixed feelings, then, that I announce that I will soon be writing the end of NoA and starting a new blog. I don't yet know what it will be called or what it will be about, but it will be more general and, I hope, better written and funnier than before. I will of course post full details here once it's up and running, and I sincerely hope you will follow me. NoA will stay on-line in archive form, for anyone who wants to go back over old ground or catch up on entries they missed.

I'm really struggling not to sign off with "Watch this space!". New Year's resolution: stop using clichés.

Parking

2007-12-23T21:10:00.000+03:00

I'm not in the habit of paying to park my car. In Riyadh you could park pretty much anywhere you can find a space -- even it it meant blocking another car in sometimes -- and even the shopping mall's multi-storey car parks were free. Here I have received two parking tickets in as many visits. Last time when I got one outside Karen's Mum's house I appealed against it, and WON! Last week we went to Highgate to finalise the paperwork for our move next month, and I got a second ticket. This time it was for going over the paid-for time by five minutes. Five Minutes! Bit spiteful if you ask me. On the way home we listened to a news item on the radio that said it was well worth appealing against parking tickets, because you usually win. I think I'll be appealing the second one too.

Having an appeal succeed is satisfying, but whether you end up paying the ticket or not, you have still spent a considerable part of your life worrying/writing/waiting to hear, and that's time you can't get back. I'm not saying there shouldn't be parking rules in the UK, but a little more latitude for those re-orienting themselves to the UK way of life might be in order.

Riyadh/WindsorCam Back Online

2007-12-23T16:12:00.000+03:00

Finally managed to sort out my two phone/email/camera dilemma, by accidentally dropping my old Blackberry, thus necessitating an upgrade to the new model, so now I have a single phone/email/camera device, and can once again snap away when I'm on my travels around town.

Can't call it RiyadhCam any more, and WindsorCam would be only temporary. Maybe I'll just call in NealCam, or maybe I'll just drop the whole name thing altogether.

Anyway here are a few snippets of what we've been up to in the run up to Christmas:

A typical family gathering

Abigail, jet-lagged from the trip from Hertfordshire!

Abigail, Lucas and Elliot at Langley train station, on the way to a Christmas Carol Singalong at the Albert Hall

Either Lucas is wearing his Santa hat at a funny angle or someone's just covered his head in shaving foam.

Ice rink at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.

BP in his hospital room. He's over the worst of his MRSA infection now but will be staying in until the New Year.

No it's not a cookery lesson, we have to wear these aprons in the hospital so we don't take BP's bugs home with us.

Plumbing Problem

2007-12-20T11:46:00.000+03:00

We've now been in the Windsor flat for three weeks, and have been without a working shower for the last six days. We noticed a few days before that the temperature of the water was temperamental, and then realised that the water coming from the head was getting colder because the hot water was leaking out of the cylinder fixed to the wall, and so not making it as far as the head at all. After that the leak got worse, to the point where water was gushing out of the cylinder even when the shower was turned off. We had no alternative but to shut the water off at the mains and call the managing agents.

They did send a plumber round within the hour, but he didn't have a replacement cylinder on him so he capped off the two now-bare pipes in the shower cubicle so that we could have the rest of the water on, and said he'd order a new cylinder. That was last Friday. It is now Thursday morning and we haven't seen him since. I did get a phone call yesterday from the managing agents to say the part was in and he was coming to install it, but that didn't happen.

So, we're having baths and I had to go to B&Q and spend £1.98 on a rubber shower head attachment for the bath taps so we can wash our hair. What I hate about situations like this is not that things sometimes take longer than originally promised, but that the person on whom you are relying to fix your problem just seems to disappear off the face of the earth, and you hear nothing unless you keep making phone calls to chase him up. Even when you do get hold of them they are unrepentant, always finding someone or something else to blame for their not having called you to explain what was going on.

In Riyadh this would not have happened. We would have put in a Works Request to the Embassy and the Technical Works Team would have sent somebody round same day. If they had needed to order a part we could always be sure that every effort would be taken to get in ordered and installed as quickly as possible, and we would have returned to normal shower operations within 24 hours typically. Now, I know things are different there, and not in a wholesome way: There is a clear class system with a distinct servant class, so the reason why the service is so good is that the workers know that they must do a good job in order to keep it. I am not comfortable with regarding others as servants or somehow inferior to me, and I believe in equality, but why is it that the price for this equality seems to be the will to provide good service? It's as if the plumber -- now my equal -- resents the dynamic between us: "I'm as good as him, so why should I rush around to make his life easier? He can wait for his shower to be fixed 'til I'm good and ready!" Of course he won't voice any of this, but will instead blame the parts department, the managing agents, or even the other plumber who installed the thing in the first place.

I'd like to find a way to inject tradesmen in the UK with the same service ethic I enjoyed in Riyadh, while maintaining social equality. This experience leaves me depressed at the prospect of dealing with the telephone/TV/electricity/gas companies when we move into the new flat.

Christmas Greetings

2007-12-18T10:15:00.000+03:00

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers, with best wishes from me and the rest of the family. Oh, did I tell you we're actually Elves?

Click the image

Crimbo Limbo

2007-12-16T13:59:00.000+03:00

This period feels a little odd. We've been back in the UK for just over two weeks now, and already the sights and sounds of Riyadh are beginning to fade into background memory, but the friends we left behind remain in our thoughts. The four of us are living in a flat made for two, but it's just for a few weeks then we move again. Some of our stuff (too much actually) is with us, making the flat look and feel even smaller, some of it is at Karen's Mum's, and the rest is bobbing along on an ocean somewhere, to be delivered to our new flat in the New Year.

So while we're settling into routines and picking up old habits, it doesn't really feel like home. The weather is wintry, which is bad because I'm cold, but it's also good for the same reason. This has always been my favourite time of year in England: I like the frost and the snow (when we can get it), the dark afternoons, and the need to wrap up in several additional layers before going out makes coming home again all the more comforting.

My wallet seems to be haemorr.... hemmmoorrrag... bleeding money. I think a recalibration of our Spend-O-Meter is definitely on the cards. But after Christmas, eh? The other thing that's a bit of a mess right now is that the more we re-install ourselves in the Rat Race, the more organizations want to know where we live. Lettings agents, motor insurance companies, websites, and so on, but which address to give? The FCO one's no good, because that mail would go to Riyadh. Don't really want to give out the address where we are at the moment because that's only valid for another four weeks, and we can't yet give out our new permanent address because we haven't signed the contract yet. There's always our previous UK address, of the house in Langley that we still own and are renting out (that's another story!). So of course I end up giving each company a different one, depending on what they need it for and whether I care if I get mail from them.

We saw the best and worst of England standing shoulder to shoulder last night. My Dad and the rest of the Royal Free Singers gave a concert of Christmas music in a church in Windsor. It was an enjoyable, civilised evening; we all had a good sing-along and a mince pie, and the choir performed a carol of my Dad's own composition, so that made the evening even more special for us. When we stepped out of the church afterwards our attention was immediately grabbed by the scene across the street. A large bar, whose young crowd had spilled noisily onto the street for a smoke. The lads with their shirts hanging out, and the girls wearing skirts that went higher than their bare legs, the only coats in sight worn by the dozen or so police officers standing watch by their white van, ready to cart troublemakers off to the cells if it "kicks off". We walked briskly past the crowd, trying to minimise the children's exposure to the f***ing expletive-peppered conversations they were all f***ing having.

We got home to a flat so warm my glasses steamed up in the hall, peeled off our scarves, gloves and coats, drew the curtains and bolted the door. Ah, that's better.

Busy

2007-12-14T13:05:00.000+03:00

A quick update, because I'm busier than a one-armed paper hanger this week.

We've got the flat we wanted in London, should have contracts signed by end next week. Picking the children up from school this afternoon, then we've got them for the holidays. Monitoring the eBay auction of my Mum's car, which she's selling because she can no longer see well enough to drive. Going to the Novell Christmas Party tonight, and BP has got an evening pass out of the hospital to attend, which is good news.

Oh yes, and working.

Decided to abandon the horn upgrade plan. I went to a small garage but the mechanic there was saying it was about 3 hours' work (hard to believe), and in the end I chickened out of ordering such cosmetic surgery on what is still a nearly new car. So, I got a refund at Halfords for the horn and am learning to live with my mild-mannered motor.

Horn Upgrade

2007-12-11T11:50:00.000+03:00

Been driving our new Polo for almost a week now, and I'm really pleased with it. My feet nuzzle luxuriously into the deep pile of the new mats, and the new Satellite Navigation system I bought feels right at home on the windscreen (more about SatNav another time). There are one or two niggling things wrong though: The VW logo plate is missing from the centre of one of the rear wheels (not sure if this was the case when I took delivery or if it disappeared subsequently), and one of the plastic collars that hold the pins of the rear headrests has broken away from its fixing inside the seat, with the result that when you adjust or remove said headrest, the collar comes with it, leaving an open wound of foam rubber on the top of the seat. However irritating these may be to me (and believe me: stuff like this really irritates me), they pale into insignificance next to the shame that is the horn. It sounds like Noddy's horn, and has about the same power to intimidate. I feel like sounding it on the open road is going to have one of two effects: either no-one will notice or the bigger cars and vans will turn and laugh, ridiculing the little runt that can't manage more than a whimper. I have a mental image of my car being pushed back and forth in a circle of big bully cars with evil grins, chanting "Weedy Horn! Weedy Horn!".

I'm used to better than this. The horn on my Prado in Riyadh used to blow the fur off stray cats at the roadside. So, I went out and bought a new horn. A loud, two-tone new horn. A horn to hide behind, a horn whose coat to hold in a fight. What peace of mind and new-found confidence It'll give me, and all for £15.99 from Halfords.

Next challenge: getting the new tough-guy horn fitted. I went along to the local VW dealer yesterday, thinking that I'd get them to fit the new horn, fix the headrest collar and wheel logo under warranty, and while I'm there I'll take advantage of their offer to upgrade the central locking system for £19.95. I think this is another make-small-car-feel-like-big-car ploy on my part, since the feature the upgrade adds is one that I've only seen on more expensive cars in the past. Once upgraded the central locking will engage automatically when you drive off, and unlock automatically when you remove the ignition key.

An hour and a half after handing over the keys I was given the following verdict:

Wheel logo plate: not covered under Warranty. New one can be ordered for £11
Headrest collar: not covered under Warranty. New one would cost £81 to order and fit.
Horn: they will not fit a 3rd-party product to the car, but can offer a VW horn upgrade for £320
Central Locking upgrade: done.

Eighty-one pounds for a plastic collar?? Three hundred and twenty to replace the horn?? No thanks! Back in Riyadh I could have simply instructed our driver to get it all fixed, and the car would have been delivered back to the house later the same day, washed and vacuumed inside and with all the work done for around £20.

I drove away wondering where else to turn to get my horn installed, and whether I can live with the knowledge of the broken headrest collar, then felt a bit better as the car passed the 5mph mark and the central locking engaged with a secure "clunk".

Pimp My Ride

2007-12-09T00:50:00.000+03:00

The last week has been pretty busy with various setting-up activities. We think we've found the place where we want to move to in the New Year: a lovely 3 bedroom flat in Highgate, North London. We'll be putting in an offer to rent it on Monday, and if successful we'll be moving into it in the second week of January.

We also bought our new car this week (the fifth of The Five): a VW Polo. The Polo was a bargain: a year old and with just 7000 miles on the clock, it's a small car but really fun to drive. We decided to get a smaller car than we're used to, to suit our new city lifestyles. It's easier to manoeuvre through the narrow streets of Highgate, easier to park, and cheaper to run than any car we've owned before. However there are two problems with it that require immediate customisation. The first is the floor, which needs protecting by a nice set of car mats. The second is the horn. Oh dear, the horn. This may be a common lament among small car owners (that's owners of small cars, not small owners of cars), but the horn on the Polo is the weediest, wimpiest thing I've ever heard. When you decide the situation calls for use of the horn you're likely to be either angry or scared, and in both cases you need your horn blast to quickly, efficiently, and emphatically to convey your desired message. This is most often one of the following:

PAARP! Get out of the way you idiot!
HONNNKKKK! More important person than you coming through!
BBEEEEEPPPP! Watch out!

When trying to convey any of these messages in the Polo however, what actually comes across is:

peep "I say, sorry to bother you, but would you mind moving aside please, if it's not too much trouble. Thanks very much."

It's hard to adequately describe how pathetically weedy the horn sounds on our new car, so on Monday I'm going to finalise the pimping of my ride, and complement my killer set of car mats with a macho horn upgrade I can be proud of.

You know you're getting old when stuff like this gets you excited.

Five Cars in Five Days

2007-12-04T10:21:00.000+03:00

Is it just me that stuff like this happens to?...

As I mentioned before, we arrived at Heathrow on Thursday evening and stayed in a nearby hotel. Next morning I take a taxi (not counted as one of the five cars) to the Hertz depot to pick up my rental car. This journey -- while enjoyed in the luxurious sumptuousness of a Mercedes limo -- was only about two miles, and set me back £15. I could've rented a car and driver for a whole day for that in Riyadh.

Sorry, I digress:

Picked up a nice new Ford Mondeo at Hertz and drove it back to the hotel to pick up Karen and the luggage: four very large, very heavy suitcases and three smaller bags. I got out and pressed the Lock button on the key... nothing. Tried again... still nothing. In a bit of a hurry (and cold, and it was drizzling), I did the only other thing I could and locked the car the old fashioned way by putting the key in the door lock and turning it. Came out with Karen and a porter wheeling the luggage, and tried the key's Unlock button... nothing. So I opened the door with the key. The alarm went off. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! and so on. Of course pressing the buttons on the key had no effect, so all we could do was get in, start the engine, and wait for the alarm's preset timeout to elapse. This was probably set at thirty seconds but it felt like an hour.

Got back to Hertz and it was too difficult for them to change the battery in the key, so instead they gave me a different new Ford Mondeo. Which would have been fine, except now I had to unload all the bags, put the rear seats back up and attach the parcel shelf in the old car, remove the parcel shelf in the new car and put the rear seats down, then load all the suitcases in to Car #2.

Car #2 was quite good in that it lasted us two whole days, and more importantly got us to the school to pick up the children, and got them back to school again without incident. However, Hertz rental is not all that cheap. We were intending to rent a car for about a week until we find one we want to buy, so after a couple of days in this second Hertz car I wanted to find a better deal. We're staying in Windsor, and a friend at the Embassy before we left told us about Baldocks of Windsor, who do cheap car rental. The reason it's less expensive is that the cars they use are a little older; in fact she told me they were "four or five years old" usually. So yesterday we went to Baldocks and exchanged our brand new Ford Mondeo for another Ford Mondeo that turned out to be older than Abigail. True, it had leather seats. True, It ran very well for a car of that age, but still -- £25 per day for a twelve-year-old car?? By this time I'd committed so I tried to make the best of it. Baldocks is a dingy old garage built under the railway arches on Alma Rd., and I met the Father of this Father/Son family business: a weather-worn man in his sixties wearing a cloth cap, blue overalls, and oil on his hands. I explained that I just wanted it for a couple of days because we're going car shopping.

He said, "Wot car you after then?"
"Oh, something small and nippy (and cheap to run). Renault Clio, that sort of thing."
"Not good cars, them. Problems."
"Oh? I've read some good reports."
"Well I don't know the new ones do I?"
This conversation was taking place as we sat on oily chairs by an oily desk, filling in grimy forms in a dark and dank brick railway arch, lit only by a couple of fluorescent tubes on each wall and filled with broken automobile carcasses. Karen was waiting in the warmth and comparative safety of the Hertz Mondeo we were about to return.

The deal finally done, we set off in convoy in Cars #2 and #3 back to Hertz. Once there we handed it back and Karen (who had of course been driving the newer car) jumped in to the passenger seat of our old banger and made a face. I had just started moving off when I saw the Hertz woman gesticulating wildly in my wing mirror. We had forgotten to remove the apartment keys from the keyring.

Now in Car #3 we set off in search of a new car to call our own. First stop, the Renault dealership in Slough. We walked up and down the forecourt for about ten minutes...

"This one looks quite nice"
"I'm freezing."
"How about this one? It's got a CD player?"
"I'm hungry."
"Three door or five?"
"I can't tell you how cold and hungry I am."
(I'll let you work out who is saying what).

...before finally giving up waiting for some help and going into the showroom. Well, I went into the showroom. Karen went to the Marks and Spencers next door to get something to eat. The "salesman" -- and I use the term loosely -- took us for a spin in a five-door Clio, but I found the 1.2 litre engine underpowered: one of those cars where you put your foot to the floor and still rock yourself forward and back in the seat to try and push it along. He couldn't find us anything better so we made our excuses and left. Karen put the key in the driver's door of the old Mondeo (this one was so old it didn't even have Lock and Unlock buttons on the key), and there was a funny noise, and the driver's door of the old Mondeo never opened again. We could lock and unlock the car from the passenger side but the driver's door had clearly decided to take early retirement. So, in I get on the passenger side and climb over to the driver's seat.

Our next stop is at Trade Sales, just down the road. We pull up in the customer car park and I am spotted climbing over and getting out of the car the same side as Karen by two of their salespeople.

"Doesn't it work?"
"Yes of course it works. I'm just choosing to get out the other side because I'm an idiot."
(That's what I wanted to say. In reality I just said, "No" with a sheepish, embarrassed smile.)

At this point the salesman could see he was onto a sure thing and latched onto us like a limpet. We wandered around their two forecourts (one either side of a main road. No wonder they wear those bright yellow coats, crossing traffic a hundred times a day) looking for Clios and anything else similar that might catch our eye. Karen continued moaning about the cold. I offered her my scarf but she said she wanted her pashmina. Where's the logic in that? True, a pashmina might look more stylish than a man's scarf purchased from Debenhams in Riyadh, but it's cold now, and the pashmina's at home. I put my scarf around her neck and tightened it, gently.

Karen's outlook on the whole car buying process was in direct proportion to how cold and/or hungry she was. Before at the Renault garage she said she was worried we were being railroaded into buying the underpowered Clio we had just test driven, and that we shouldn't rush into anything. Here, a half hour of being cold later, she spotted a black VW Polo, got in, and when I got in next to her, said, "Let's get this one." I asked for a test drive. They don't do test drives at Trade Sales. I asked for a discount. They don't do discount. I said we'd take it.

While we were in the office doing the paperwork I was on the phone to Baldocks to complain about the jammed driver's door in Car #3. They offered me a replacement. We left a deposit on Car #5 and set off back to Baldocks to swap Car #3 for Car #4: a seven-year-old Fiat Punto which makes a kind of Wonka's Chocolate factory "gloop gloop" noise when running, that makes me think it runs on bubbles instead of petrol.

Wish us luck. I just hope Car #4 gets us around town and back to pick up Car #5 before it runs out of bubbles.

Still Adjusting

2007-12-03T10:06:00.000+03:00

Had a nice -- but wet -- weekend with the children. We spent most of Saturday visiting family and on Sunday went to London to do some clothes shopping, and got caught in a torrential downpour. Lunch was at The Argyll Arms in Argyll St., just off Oxford St. The food was good and our dripping clothes and damp smell didn't seem to offend the other diners too much. Funnily enough they all seemed to be much drier than we; either the rain was targetting us specifically out of spite, or we're a bit rusty (sorry!) on how to handle this kind of weather. Needless to say the four umbrellas we own (and took to Riyadh with us but never used) are in a container somewhere in the Arabian Gulf.

Still haven't made up my mind how to feel about living back in the UK. Of course it's great to be close to friends and family, but Riyadh was our home for two years and we have friends there too, so we feel a bit in Limbo. Things currently occupying our time are flat-hunting, car-shopping, and generally paying through the nose for things that we're used to getting either for free or cheap. On our first night here we fancied a late snack, so ordered two drinks and a plate of nachos in the hotel bar: £25 !! I could've filled the petrol tank on my Prado three times over for that!

The other thing that feels a bit alien at the moment is my loss of RiyadhCam. When in Saudi I had two mobiles: the Saudi number from the Embassy (RiyadhCam) and my Blackberry (work). Now I have only my UK number, and really need to keep the Blackberry for work, so my Samsung phone that also did such sterling work as RiyadhCam lies switched off, cardless, and unused in the bottom of my bag. This can only be bad for the blog, because without pictures all you've got is my writing, and we can't have that, can we? I enquired about having two SIM cards on the same number but apparently that doesn't support data services, so would break my Blackberry email.

I wonder if I can use the camera on my phone without having a SIM card in it? Ooh that's a possibility. Where's me bag?

Rushing around

2007-12-01T09:50:00.000+03:00

I don't have time to blog properly right now but I wanted to post something just to show that I haven't forgotten about you!

We got back to UK on Thursday night, and since then we've hardly stopped loading/unloading suitcases: big, heavy suitcases. Renting cars, changing rental cars because the first one didn't work (and unloading/loading four big, heavy suitcases again), shopping, paying (PAYING!) to park the car, and all the while trying to dodge raindrops.

While en route back I received an email telling me that BP -- a friend of mine from work and the one who got the speeding ticket in Nevada back in September -- had been infected by the MRSA Superbug, and this took hold following a routine operation on a knee injury. He was taken seriously ill with breathing and heart problems, and transferred immediately to the Coronary Care Unit of a larger hospital. I went to visit him yesterday and he's out of danger now, but it was a close call and it'll take a while for him to fully recover.

This morning (Saturday) we're driving up to the school to collect the children for the weekend. Really looking forward to seeing them again.

Not sure yet how I feel about being back here, and not in Saudi anymore. We made some great friends there and I want to thank them all for their fond farewells and kind wishes.

Ma' asalama

2007-11-28T10:37:00.000+03:00

I've probably misspelled that, but it's Arabic for goodbye.

Today is our last full day in Saudi and although it's sunny and the sky is blue it's only 18 Celsius, which for Saudi is flippin' cold. Still, helps us prepare for returning to the UK. Karen is at work and I am sitting in an empty house crossing things off my to-do list. I still have to return borrowed DVDs to the library, close the bank accounts, sign some forms to do with the house, and hand the car over to Karen's successor. Tonight there is a party at the Wadi Club, where we will say our last goodbyes to everyone, and we depart for pastures cold and grey tomorrow morning.

I feel like I should be writing a retrospective about the last two years: the highs and lows, things I will always remember and things I want to forget, but I can't find the words for that today. My mind is still buzzing about leaving logistics and packing (I was wide awake at 3am this morning). So, here's the plan. This will be my last posting from Riyadh but I will continue with NoA for a while once we get back to UK. That will give me time to properly summarise a remarkable and memorable two years, and to give you my first impressions of returning to life in England. It will take another few weeks for Karen's next job to be finalised too, so I'm going to give myself that time to "finish" this blog (for want of a better word), then decide on my blogging future once we know what our working future will be.

So for now, it's Ma' asalama and I will write again once we're settled in cold, dark Berkshire.

RiyadhCam: The Final Episode (Really)

2007-11-28T10:28:00.000+03:00

Had to share this. I went out shopping this morning for the final time, just to get some Paracetamol and Antacid tablets from the pharmacy. When I asked the pharmacist for some Rennie this is what he gave me:

The Rennie Gift Pack

Two jumbo pack of 48 Rennie tablets, in a gift box, complete with free cutlery set. And all for 17 Riyals (£2).

Back of box

Only in Saudi!

Neal Of Arabia

2007-11-27T09:55:00.000+03:00

Yes, the time has finally come to reveal the true Son of the Desert. Little did you know it, but all the while you've been thinking of me as a blundering ex-pat looking quizzically at life in Saudi, whereas in reality I'm a true native and have been wearing a thobe and ghutrah for the last two years. I can hold the steering wheel with my knees, and drink coffee, smoke, and text while driving with the best of them. I have a different-coloured set of prayer beads for each day of the week and I like nothing better on a Friday afternoon than picnicking with my family on the wild fringe of the Dammam Highway, sat cross-legged on the dusty ground in the lee of our 4x4.

All of which is my twisted way of trying to tell you how I felt when I donned a thobe for the very first time the other day. I selected one of Riyadh's hundreds of traditional clothing stores almost at random: I'd been given advice as to which part of the city to go to, but from then on it was all my own work.

"Thobe-U-Like"

I told the two Pakistani assistants that I wanted the full kit, and before I knew it one of them had whipped his tape measure out and was taking my vital statistics. He measured my height shoulder to ankle, followed by my waist. They must keep the "fatty" sizes out the back because he immediately walked past a wall filled floor to ceiling with boxed thobes and through a curtain to get one from the store room. There are several collar styles, with the main two being a high, round collar and the other a more conventional shirt collar. The accepted norm here seems to be that the round collar is preferred by the Young Bucks, while the older men wear the regular one. I chose the round one, however, partly because I didn't want to be lumped into the Old Man category and partly because I think it looks better. Besides, the Young Bucks leave theirs unbuttoned, so as long as I button mine up I'll look respectable and not mutton dressed as lamb -- at least, it's a theory.

Hmm, which to choose?

The next dilemma was choosing a ghutrah. With hundreds on display and all subtle variations of a single standard pattern, there wasn't much of a choice to be made, so I just said, "I want a ghutrah" and accepted the first one, presented in a nice box, that they offered me. To that I added an iqal -- the black ring that goes above the headdress, and a skull cap that goes on the head and helps stop the ghutrah from slipping. Also in the pile were white undertrousers and T-shirt. I was quite impressed with the packaging. Although shopping very much at the budget end of the market, the ghutrah, iqal and thobe each came nicely presented in their own, substantial boxes.

"I'll take it!"

The whole lot came to just over 200 Riyals, which is about £26. I could have spent a lot more and had a thobe tailor-made, but I'm running short of time and will probably only wear it once in a blue moon anyway.

I made my way home expecting none of it to fit. I hadn't tried anything on and the chaps in the shop had made some pretty snap assessments of my size, but I should have known better than to worry. When I got home and tried it on it fitted perfectly; they know their stuff alright. The only thing that felt a bit odd was the iqal, which felt too small, but then I don't know how one should feel so it might be normal. Not worth worrying about and I don't have time to go back and exchange it.

I toyed with the idea of having it on when Karen came home from work as a surprise, but thought she might have a heart attack and press the panic button on being confronted by a Saudi in the house, so I waited for her to return and then gave her the fashion show. She managed to keep a straight face too as she snapped these photos in our back garden. Do I look like a natural Arab or a fool with no self respect?

"Salaam Alaykum. Is that KFC Delivery?"

The mobile phone is the ideal accessory for posing like a Saudi. The image would have been complete with a cigarette in the other hand.

Thobes are really comfortable. It's like being able to wear your pyjamas outdoors!

So if you're in Royal Windsor anytime in the next couple of months and you see a Saudi walking down Peascod St. wearing light blue Crocs, come and say Hi, because I expect everyone else will be giving me a wide berth.

RiyadhCam: Final Edition

2007-11-26T11:58:00.000+03:00

Time to unload the latest -- and last -- collection of pictures from my mobile phone. RiyadhCam has been invaluable to me as I wander around this place; small and light enough to use anywhere, allowing me to capture images of Riyadh that would otherwise be very hard to get in a city where photography is strictly prohibited in some places, and merely frowned upon in others.

Anyway, here's the final batch:

Granada Mall at prayer time.

Doesn't have quite the same ring as New York or Milan.

Examples of the finery Saudi women wear to parties and weddings. Their unveiled form is for relatives' eyes only.

...and again. Some malls have dozens of shops like this all in a row.

By the cash desk in Debenhams.

Of course Christmas is not allowed to be celebrated publicly, but that doesn't stop expat-friendly supermarkets from displaying certain provisions in a certain arrangement.

And finally, the famous sign at the entrance to the Diplomatic Quarter. Spot the typo.

Neal Soon-to-be-no-longer Of Arabia

2007-11-24T13:03:00.000+03:00

Things are really busy at present, what with packing, arranging the sale of the car, making arrangements in the UK and so on, but there is one thing overarching all of that. One thing that is keeping me awake at night (not really). And that is... what am I going to do with this blog once I cease being Neal of Arabia? We could go somewhere else exotic or we could be heading for two years plus in London. Who wants to read about life in London? I'm starting to worry that being Neal of Arabia is all that makes me interesting to my thousands (well, dozens) of readers.

I will certainly continue blogging -- it's so much a part of my life now that I can't imagine not doing it anymore, but what to blog about, and what to call it? Should I change the name, or put NoA into hibernation and start up something new? Will my loyal fans follow me on this new venture? Would anyone care if I were to swap RiyadhCam for RuislipCam?

Looking at the prospect of setting up home again in UK the thing I'm least looking forward to is having to deal with all those call centres: Sky, BT, car insurance, gas, electricity, water board. Why is it that, whatever time of the day or night I choose to phone a call centre (ANY call centre), I get, "You have called at a busy time." How inconsiderate of me, and how nice of them to put me in a queue until the next agent becomes available. I'm so lucky that they have deigned to allow me to use their services. Right, last-minute check: bill, account number, password, mother's maiden name... don't want to get caught out when my turn finally comes.

As you can see, call centres are a pet hate of mine and the mere thought of having to deal with them all again is making my blood pressure rise. Perhaps a Call Centre blog is just the ticket: a place where I can blow off steam and so hold on to my sanity. It's you, the poor reader, I feel sorry for. Maybe I'll rethink and create a new blog about nice things. Something you can visit every day and get a little ray of sunshine to put that spring in your step as you head off to work. Of course in reality it'll probably end up being a bit of both, and just like NoA except without the "A" stuff.

PS I bought my Arabian outfit this morning: thobe, undergarments, iqal, and ghutra. Trouble is I haven't had time to try it on. I did try on the iqal (the black fanbelt-thing that goes on the head) but it feels too small. Have to swap it tomorrow for an XXL one. Anyway, pictures to follow some time between now and Thursday.

Karen on TV

2007-11-22T18:17:00.000+03:00

As mentioned in an earlier post, Karen recently appeared on Saudi breakfast news TV talking about the new Visa Application Centre that she helped to open in central Riyadh. I managed to get hold of a copy of the recording, so here it is for your viewing pleasure. Karen answered questions for several minutes but in the final clip they only used a few seconds. The TV world is so fickle...

Refund

2007-11-21T12:30:00.000+03:00

I went to the Riyadh offices of Gulf Air this morning, with three objectives:

Change our exit flight to an earlier time
Book the (included) Chauffeur Drive option at Heathrow
Get a refund for two of our tickets back from Dubai the other week being downgraded.

1 & 2 took about ten minutes. 3 took fifty minutes.

There were two rows of double-parked cars, as usual, outside the Gulf Air office, so I copied everyone else and blocked someone else's car in. After a wait of around ten minutes it was my turn to be seen, but no sooner had I sat down than an Arab asked me to move my car so he could get out. I let him out then parked in the space he'd vacated, then returned to the agent's desk.

When we returned from Dubai a few weeks ago Elliot and I had to come back in Economy, because Gulf Air had oversold Business Class and had only two of our four seats available. I was told at the time to keep the ticket stubs and obtain a refund from my local office. On hearing this the agent's first gambit was to say he needed to email the head office in Bahrain to enquire if a refund is in order, then he would phone me when the answer came back. This was totally out of order and I told him so. It was they who had oversold the flight, I had proof of purchase for four Business Class tickets and two Economy stubs for the same flight in my hand. Of course a refund was in order. I told him I was not prepared to come back again to get my money and that I wanted him to sort it out now, while I waited.

He went off to speak to someone, taking all my paperwork with him, then returned a few minutes later carrying three thick, carbon-papered receipt books. He asked for my Iqama (I.D. card), which he gave to a little man in overalls. The little man disappeared and came back a couple of minutes later with my Iqama and a photocopy of same. The agent then told the little man to collect his computer printouts from the printer on the other side of the office, which he did, then he disappeared again. Two minutes later I saw the same little man walking out from the back office carrying a cup of coffee, which he took into another office and put on the desk. This chap is apparently the Office Gopher, although his dark blue overalls make him look more like a cleaner. Back at the desk there is much tapping of keys and stapling of paper, then the agent starts filling in a (detailed) form, in one of the books, in triplicate. Then he gets me to sign and date it, and leads me to the cashier's office to get my money.

I didn't know it at the time but the refund in question was SR88 per ticket, about £12, so I'd hung around for fifty minutes and witnessed a mess of paperwork, all to get less than £25 back.

I finally got out about an hour later to find my car had been blocked in, so I had to go back in and find the right driver to let me out.

Mush For Brains

2007-11-20T10:20:00.000+03:00

I'm back from my trip to sunny (and partly rainy) Orlando, and I'm sitting here with a somewhat mushy outlook on life. I put this down to three things:

1. Jet lag.
2. Trying to re-train my brain to speak English again instead of American.
3. Ten days to go before leaving Riyadh for ever.

1.
I left Orlando at 2pm local time on Sunday, which is 10pm Riyadh time. A two hour flight to Washington Dulles Airport (horrible place, what I saw of it), a two-hour layover, then a seven hour overnight flight to Heathrow (bought a Business Class upgrade with my miles: Thank you United! Bmi won't let you do that), then a five-hour layover, then another seven hour flight to Riyadh, arriving at 9pm local time on Monday. So a twenty-three hour trip airport to airport, more like twenty-five door-to-door. I took a sleeping pill and went to bed at around 11.30 last night, and woke up at 9am. Better than I'd hoped, but let's see how I feel come sunset.

Restroom = Toilet
"Can I get...?" = "Could I have...?"
Check = Bill
Candy = Chocolate
Fillet ("Filay") = Fillet ("Fillet")
Appetizer = Starter
Entree = Main Course
"Let's go ahead and get started" = "If I could have your attention please"
"Wahder" = "Water"
Trash = Rubbish

3.
We leave Riyadh on Nov 29, in nine days' time, and before that we have to pack up all our possessions and get them collected by the right people at the right time, to be sent to the right place. Apparently (I didn't know this before) there are two different companies shipping our UAF (Unattended Air Freight) and our Heavy Baggage, and the survey that was done before I went to the U.S. was just for the UAF. The guy must've thought it was his birthday as I made him list out everything we own. But no. Apparently there's another company moving the Heavy Baggage and there survey is happening on Tuesday at 10am. Hang on... today is Tuesday, and it's now 1040... Where are they?

I'm a bit worried about all our things getting to us at our new location (wherever that may be). We're going to UK for six weeks to spend Christmas and New Year with the children and family, and for Karen to finalise her next posting. During that time we only need our UAF and don't want to see the Heavy Baggage until we have a new permanent address. I'm also fretting about being able to transfer money out of our Saudi bank account and into a UK one, about canceling the broadband internet connection late enough that we can still use it but early enough so we don't pay a month's fee for nothing.

Oh yes, and I have a load of follow-up work from our Kickoff meeting in Orlando. ...think I'll just drink my coffee and continue staring into space for another ten minutes, then I'll "go ahead and get started".

Counting Down

2007-11-10T14:39:00.000+03:00

It's almost time for us to pack up our things and leave Riyadh for good. Tomorrow I fly to the U.S. on a business trip for eight days, so when I get back we will have only ten more days in the Kingdom, with our final day being on November 29.

We've had the Garage Sale and now we are starting to run down the grocery stocks by consuming whatever we happen to have left in the cupboard/fridge/freezer rather than buying more food. Should make for some interesting meal times: what could you conjure up with tinned tuna, frozen peas, baked beans, fish sauce, four half-empty packets of pasta, and a nearly full family tub of Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream?

We're also starting to plan the packing, and this morning I had the local DHL agent round to do a survey of our belongings, which leave post in three consignments. First there's the luggage we take with us, enough for around three to four weeks. Then there is a larger consignment called Unattended Air Freight or UAF for short. This will contain the remainder of our clothes and some other items that we will need in the first couple of months. The last, and largest, consignment is the Heavy Baggage. The HB contains all the rest of our effects, including computers, TV/Hi-fi equipment, kitchen crockery, pans, utensils, framed pictures, CDs/DVDs, board games, Karen's craft gear and so on. This will take two to three months to follow us because it goes by ocean container. Showing the DHL guy round the house with his clipboard and tape measure reminded me of the last time we did it, back in our house in Berkshire, and I'm not looking forward to receiving/unpacking at the other end either, as my report of the baggage arriving here will attest.

So now I'm off to pack my suitcase, then tonight is my last Poker game with the gang, then I leave for the airport at Midnight for the overnight flight to London and then on to the U.S. I doubt that I'll have time to blog while I'm away, but you never know. It's quite usual for the jet lag to leave me wide awake in the middle of the night, in which case you may get some wee-small-hours ramblings, but if you're lucky there won't be anything more until I get back to Saudi.

15 Minutes of Fame

2007-11-08T07:51:00.000+03:00

Have you ever been on TV? If not, you may know someone who has. Well now you know a few more.

The Embassy is going through a major change programme at the moment, to do with the visa application process. Part of the process -- the bit where the applicant comes in, submits their application and documents, pays for, and later collect their visa -- has this week moved to a brand new Visa Application Centre (VAC) in the centre of town, run by a commercial partner. The completed application forms are then sent to the Embassy and Karen and colleagues process them, with the resulting issued visas being delivered back to the VAC for next-day pickup. This move is being done in conjunction with a biometrics initiative, so applicants now also have their fingerprints and a photo recorded, for security reasons.

These changes are not unique to Saudi Arabia. The British Government is rolling these two changes out worldwide, and this week it just happens to be Saudi's turn. If you want to know more about the project check the UK Visas and British Embassy Riyadh websites. As part of this new VAC going live, we have had several visitors this week from UK Visas in London, to deliver training to the new staff on Visa applications, and to new and Embassy staff on taking biometrics information from customers.

I expect you're wondering what the heck this has to do with the title: "15 Minutes of Fame". Well I'll tell you, now that you have the background. Karen has been performing the role of Change Agent for this project, and has been fully involved all the way along. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the VAC last Monday she was interviewed by the local Saudi TV news station, who had also come to see Riyadh's answer to David Beckham: recruited to lend the proceedings a celebrity air by being photographed giving his biometric details. There was a Reception for the visitors from London the following evening (Go-Live Day for the VAC), and after dinner the conversation turned to TV appearances. Karen, naturally, recounted her experience from earlier, and I told the group about my winning appearance on the game show Bob's Full House in the mid-1980s. It seems like a lifetime ago but it's a nice piece of ammo to have in your arsenal for occasions such as this.

Bob's Full House

For the benefit of my non-UK readers, Bob's Full House was an 80's game show hosted by comedian Bob Monkhouse and based on the game of Bingo. Each time a contestant got a question right they could cross off a number on their bingo card, and the rounds were: completing the four corners, middle line, and finally the full house. It sounds really naff as I write about it, but at the time it was very popular.

Bob Monkhouse

Anyway I won a holiday, which became our honeymoon, as the show recording took place a few months before Karen and I were married. I have the show on video tape, so if you want to know what I looked like at 25 years of age and wearing 80's clothes you would have to a) be invited round for dinner, and b) get me very drunk. Upon hearing this, one of the trainers from UK Visas revealed that he had appeared on The Crystal Maze back in the late 80's too. I won't bore you with an explanation of the show's format but it was a bit of a cult hit in the UK.

The Crystal Maze

Mark's show was in the original, golden, Richard O'Brien years and not in the later series that were hosted by Ed Tudor Pole. Richard O'Brien is the thin, bald, totally cool character who wrote The Rocky Horror Show, and starred in the movie version (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) as the butler Riff Raff.

Richard O'Brien as Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show

His presence as the Crystal Maze's host gave the show the same kooky, spooky, spaced-out air, and we used to watch it more for Richard's performance than for the puzzles themselves. Mark boasted that he had won a crystal, but refused to be drawn by my question: "So did you get locked in?" I took that to mean he had but didn't like to talk about it. Karen was a big fan of TCM, so her eyes lit up at this revelation and she wouldn't stop asking him questions about it.

The next morning one of the PR chaps at the Embassy came into Karen's office to say her TV interview had been showing every hour on the Riyadh equivalent of GMTV, and that he had recorded the latest bulletin. Karen and the London visitors ran upstairs to watch the recorded news item, and cheered each time they saw one of their number standing in the background. When Karen came on, speaking through an interpreter, there was an even bigger cheer, and part-way through Mark leaned close to her and whispered, "This doesn't beat The Crystal Maze!"

I haven't seen the clip yet, but I'm going to ask if it's possible to get a digitized copy, and if successful I'll post it here.

Halloween Party

2007-11-05T12:46:00.000+03:00

When we lived in the UK the thing that scared me most about Halloween was not the ghosts, ghouls and goblins that might be out and about but the hoodies, yobs and chavs prowling residential streets, armed with eggs and demanding treats with menaces. No Trick Or Treat in Riyadh (at least, not that I am aware of), so this year we had to look elsewhere for our spooky thrills.

Three things I like about Linda are: that she's a great laugh, she organised a fancy dress Halloween Party last Wednesday, and she lives only two doors down the road. So, we had a great Halloween night, in good company, and had only twenty yards to stagger home afterwards -- what more could you ask for?

There are probably several shops in Riyadh from which we could have got fancy dress costumes -- you can buy pretty much anything here if you're willing to look hard enough -- but we decided to play it safe by ordering Halloween costumes from a UK company on the internet. I had my "Scream" outfit and Karen's Gothic Vamp dress delivered to Karen's sister Laura, so that the children could bring them out in their suitcases when they came for half term. However when the package arrived Laura found it was five foot long. In my enthusiasm I'd ordered a plastic Grim Reaper Scythe and a Devil's Trident without really thinking it through from a packaging perspective.

"Grrrrr!"
"Where's me scythe?"

Laura did what anyone faced with such a conundrum would do: she cut them in half and put them in the suitcases in bits, to be re-assembled at the other end of the journey. We didn't use them in the end, mainly because to repair them looked too much like hard work to me. Anyone want to buy a two-foot scythe? Damn, we should've put them in the Garage Sale. Filipino children look angelic to me, but I'm sure they must have their demonic side too.

Anyway, here is the party in pictures. Plenty to be scared of here, I think you'll agree!

Here's "Carrie" with a limp-wristed zombie.

Mr. & Mrs. G. Reaper

Gordon's always been a bit of a Hellraiser.

"Give us a kiss luv!"
"Not likely! Look what happened when you gave me a Love Bite!"

I've got more photos, but Blogger won't let me upload them. They've got a bug somewhere :-(

Garage Sale

2007-11-03T09:49:00.000+03:00

Our Garage Sale on Friday was a success. I had created a poster and the Embassy emailed it to all the families, drivers, domestic staff and so on to help get the word out. Karen and I had been sorting stuff to sell all week and we had huge piles of it all around the living room.

The Build-up

Apologies to any Family members who might spot an old Christmas present or two.

We borrowed some tables from the Embassy and early Friday morning set up our stalls in the yard outside, ably assisted by our maid Gina and her husband Rick.

Before

Gina and Rick also helped bring in the punters -- most of the Filipinos who turned up seemed to be their friends. I had been concerned that no-one would come and that we'd have to pack all the stuff away again, but I needn't have worried. A busy two hours followed, during which we sold about three quarters of the goods. We had bikes, clothes, books, CDs, DVDs, board games, shoes, camping equipment, ornaments, crockery, even my old rollerblades went. My iPod and speakers were playing on a table behind the counter to create some atmosphere, and I almost fight them off from wanting to buy that too. How could I sell my beloved iPod, especially as it had proven its durability in The Gym Incident ?

The two tents we had for sale didn't attract any interest, and neither did the books nor my unwanted CDs: I guess our musical tastes must be incompatible. There's me trying to sell a Killswitch Engage album and they're asking for Julio Iglesias. Oh well.

After

After the customers had gone we gave Rick and Gina their pick of what was left as a thankyou for helping us, and by 12 noon the yard was completely clear again. You'd never know such a bustling market had been there not an hour before.

Karen counted up the dosh and we made around SR2,500, which is just over £300. Not a bad haul but the trouble was it was mostly in small denomination notes: SR1 is about 14p, and we had a huge pile of 1 Riyal and 5 Riyasl notes on the dining room table. In the evening we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate, and I thought it'd be an opportunity to get rid of some of these small notes, so I put a big pile together and handed them to Karen to put in her handbag. She thought it was too much and peeled about a third off the pile, stuffing the rest -- still a wad the size of a housebrick -- into her bag, dinner bill for payment thereof.

I wanted to try Tokyo, a Japanese restaurant that had been recommended, but when we got there it was closed (doesn't open on Fridays). Now in the mood for Oriental I consulted my trusty GPS and it led us to the Radisson Hotel and it's Shogun Teppanyaki restaurant. I was a bit underdressed for this place (wrinkled shirt, jeans, Crocs), but then a high-class joint like this hadn't been part of the plan when we'd left the house. The staff took my appearance in good humour though, and we were admitted without a punch-up.

The meal was OK but no better, and when the bill came Karen delved into her bag for the Small Note Mountain she'd brought. The bill was SR411, and after about five minutes of counting we concluded that our pile of small bills came to precisely SR409. DOH! Can I just say at this point that it was I who had assembled a larger pile and it was Karen who had skimmed some off? Just for the record. I paid the bill with a SR500 note (got even more change) and Karen refilled her handbag with the pile.

Only slightly embarrassing.

Hazardous Occupations #23: Optician

2007-10-31T00:57:00.001+03:00

A funny thing happened today.

I've been visiting quite a few Riyadh opticians recently. The reason is I have a pair of fancy folding wraparound sunglasses with rubber sleeves on the arms, and through various instances of misuse (most involving a swimming pool) these rubber sleeves have become torn and frayed at the edge. So, being designer glasses 'n' all I've been scouting around for replacement sleeves. Boring so far I know, but the scene needed setting....

At the weekend I went into Magrabi Optical in Hayat Mall on Old Airport Rd. This was around Optician's Number Ten on my quest, so by now I was used to negative responses. I was greeted by a young male (they all are) Receptionist and the eventual answer was indeed negative, again, but what struck me about this young man was that he had a very odd bruise on his forehead. It was like a horizontal stripe of a bruise, about three-to-four inches long, right in the middle of his forehead. I found it hard not to look at it, but refrained from asking him how he'd got it. They didn't carry spare Carrera rubber thingies in stock, but he suggested I try their branch in Sahara Plaza mall, because that's where their workshop is so they'd be likely to have a larger stock of spares.

I finally got around to this next stage of the quest this morning, and when I entered the shop I found that it was indeed several times larger than the first branch. Any thought of actually getting my spare parts disappeard in a puff of smoke, however, when I saw the young man sat at Reception. He had the same kind of bruise on his forehead! I know what you're thinking, and NO -- it wasn't the same bloke on a temporary transfer, but a completely different young male bruised Receptionist.

When I told Karen the story this afternoon (she already knew about bruised Receptionist #1) she made me laugh by suggesting that they'd got them from that eye testing machine where you have to rest your head against a padded bar to look into the patients' eyes. How we laughed, speculating that perhaps you were relegated to Reception if you had performed clumsily in your Skillful Use Of Eye Test Machine test. Or perhaps, when it's quiet in the shop, like it is most mornings, they relieve the boredom by having eye test machine races to see who can sit-look-run around-sit-look-from-the-other-side the fastest.

We'll never know.

Last Trip To Dubai

2007-10-29T14:17:00.000+03:00

Now that we've gotten the embarrassment of The Gym Incident out of the way, I can relax and tell you about the trip itself.

Since this was to be our last visit to Dubai for the foreseeable future we wanted to do it in style, so booked two rooms at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. This strikingly-original 5 star deluxe hotel is part of the large beach-front Jumeirah complex that also houses the 7 star Burj Al Arab hotel, the Wild Wadi, two more hotels, and the Madinat Jumeirah -- itself a complex of dozens of bars and restaurants all sited around an indoor/outdoor "souk" or market, and surrounded by a network of waterways, on which you can travel around the resort by powered gondola. The Jumeirah Beach is expensive at the best of times, and, being October half-term, this was the worst of times. The bank balance is still recovering but we had a ball.

The wave-like Jumeirah Beach Hotel from the Marina

The hotel building looks like a giant wave with its slanting walls and curved design. Our rooms were on the 17th floor out of 25, and every room has floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the beach, marina, and ocean.

Great for views like this:

Yes, this was taken through our hotel room window!

...but not so great when the window cleaners come to call!

I don't think they could see in... at least I hope not!

The room level we had also gave us access to The Executive Pool: an exclusive pool and beach area for the JB's favourite guests, and guests of the Burj Al Arab.

With that kind of exclusivity you'd expect to get a better class of sun worshipper wouldn't you? Not a bit of it. Every morning when we went down, most of the sun loungers had been "reserved" by guests coming down with their towels before breakfast, and they were English, not German! This kind of thing really annoys me. It never actually inconvenienced us because there were still other loungers "available", but a few times I saw large families swanning in late morning and getting annoyed because their "reserved" loungers had been taken by someone else. "Serves you right" say I. I hate this kind of selfishness. Then, to cap it all, we saw a woman come in with her own airbed, already inflated, and with the name and room number written on it in marker pen. I might as well be at Butlins (sorry if that doesn't mean anything to my non-English readers). All of these uncouth shenanigans were oddly contrasted by our surroundings, with the majestic Burj in the background, and high-rolling guests arriving and departing by helicopter throughout the day.

Another Helipad departure. Unfortunately it wasn't LiLo Woman.

Right, rant over now, and we did have a great time by the pool despite the "great unwashed" and their cheeky ways.

"Alright, who had baked beans for breakfast?"

Ibn Battuta Mall & Cinema
Dubai's two best-known shopping malls are The Mall Of The Emirates and Ibn Battuta Mall. MOTE is very close to the hotel and also home to Ski Dubai, an indoor ski resort with real snow. The mall is huge, and great but usually very busy, so for a change we got a ride further out of town to Ibn Battuta Mall. If you ever go to Dubai I recommend a visit here. The mall is (again) huge and has several sections or "courts", each one themed after different parts of Middle East and Asia.

Egypt Court

Starbucks in Persia Court

Can't Remember Court

There's China Court, India Court, Persia Court... you get the idea. This makes for a very pleasant shopping experience, as all the big name shops you want are there, but in a very pretty setting.

The cinema in China Court

While Karen and Abigail got their nails done Elliot and I finally saw The Kingdom -- the new action movie set in Riyadh and starring Jamie Foxx. Although a 15 certificate in UK, here it is an 18 Plus, so Elliot had to stand up straight and put on his deepest voice to get past the ticket counter.

I went in with very low expectations of this movie. I had read several reviews and they were all bad, but all in Middle Eastern papers. The other thing that had made me cynical was my knowledge that, set in Riyadh or not, there ain't no way any part of this film was actually shot in Saudi Arabia, the authorities would never allow it. Most of the city shots were actually of Abu Dhabi in the U.A.E., with the Kingdom Tower "Photoshopped in". Despite this I have to say I enjoyed the film a lot. They captured the compound atmosphere quite well, and some of the city shots were similar to Riyadh's nicer parts. The story was pretty far-fetched but action-packed, and overall the film had more integrity than I was expecting.

The Kingdom Trailer

Stomp!
On Monday night we went to see a live show called Stomp!, in the Madinat Theatre close to the hotel. Stomp! has been in London's West End and on Broadway too. It's basically a percussive dance show, with the eight performers dressed in scruffy overalls and beating out catchy rhythms in a combination of tap dancing, clapping, and drumming with a variety of things you might find in an alley: brooms, dustbins, old newspapers etc. A really good show with great performances, it had humour, audience participation, and made you want to stomp your feet. My only criticism was that -- at an hour and a half with no interval -- it was about 15 minutes too long, and towards the end I was starting to get a headache from the boom boom booms.

Abigail showing off her new phone and handbag at dinner.

Burj Al Arab
No visit to this part of Dubai is complete without a nosey around the inside of the Burj Al Arab: the world's only seven star hotel. Designed to look like a billowing sail, the Burj is over 320 metres tall and very luxurious. Every room is a duplex suite and the public areas are glamorously decorated, with really impressive dancing fountains, and gold everywhere. It's actually a little too brash and borders on the vulgar, but I guess it's OK in a "if you've got it (wealth), flaunt it" way. Here's a shot of the Burj at sunset, taken from the JB's Marina:

The sticky-out bit at the top (not the Helipad, the other bit) is the Sky Bar and Restaurant on the 27th floor.

As Jumeirah Beach Guests we were allowed into the hotel, which can only normally be accessed either by helicopter or private road with security checkpoint. We looked around the reception area and shops for a while, and then went up to the Sky Bar on the 27th floor to check out the view. We couldn't stay here for a drink because it's over-21's only, so we got a couple of photos and went back down to the Lobby Bar.

Our hotel from the Burj Sky Bar.
It doesn't look this high from the ground!

I didn't think I'd get away with ordering one Coke and four straws, so I splashed out on a drink each, but after one look at the prices on the menu I whipped it out of the childrens' hands and said, "Coke or Lemonade?". My Good Lady Wife, of course, could have whatever her heart desired (as long as it wasn't expensive).

So that's Goodbye to Dubai. An odd but interesting place: in many ways still Middle Eastern but in others just like Las Vegas. It's growing at a phenomenal rate and gets tackier as it gets bigger, but you won't find anywhere else like it.

The Gym Incident

2007-10-27T09:40:00.000+03:00

Monday morning after our first night in the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai. I am roused, bleary-eyed by Karen's entreaties to accompany her to the gym. Now, obviously an Adonis like myself has no need of further muscle-toning but Karen doesn't want to go alone so I leap out of bed and tag along to keep her company. Anything to make her happy. And it did make her happy, but not in the way originally intended.

The hotel gym is in a separate building called the Pavilion, and is accessed from the rear of the hotel down twisting, tree-canopied paths snaking between designer swimming pools, and then along a beach-front path. Simply getting there is a mini-workout in itself.

Inside there were several Latex-clad, headband-wearing women jogging, cycling, stepping and ellipting(?), and a few men about my age, all of whom were sweating at the same time as going through the aforementioned exertions. And who says we can't multi-task? I strode up and down the ranks of waiting machinery like a General inspecting his troops, looking each one up and down to pick the lucky contraption that was to have the honour of lifting me another rung up the ladder of physical perfection. I finally selected a vacant treadmill in between two jogging goddesses, and Karen chose an elliptical trainer (machine that can't make up its mind whether to be a stepper or an exercise bike) in the row in front of me, and we began our workout.

Karen began by starting to exercise. I began by taking my iPod and headphones out of my pocket, connecting both, and selecting a suitably rocking album to accompany my impending Power Walk. Naturally my rotating thumb slowed to a halt at Rammstein's "Mutter", and with a sly grin of anticipation I clicked Play, rested my iPod on the narrow shelf in front of me and selected an exercise program on the computer. I kept pace as the rubber conveyor belt under my feet began to move and pick up speed.

As the machine revved up a gear so did the music. "Mein Herz Brennt" gave way to "Links-2-3-4" which in turn made way for "Sonne" & "Ich Will". By the time the wailing sirens of "Feuer Frei" invaded my ears the machine and I were marching along in top gear. As I marched, my arms started to swing more energetically, with the headphone cable too swinging in time between my head and the chest-height shelf holding my iPod.

Then several things happened in quick succession. My swinging arm caught the headphone cable, the cable popped out of the iPod's socket, and the iPod in turn leapt off the shelf and fell to the floor between my feet. I instinctively bent down to rescue my favourite gadget, afraid that I'd broken it, there was a thud, and I was conveyed, backwards, on all fours and at speed, to the waiting laminate wood floor behind, which I hit with another loud thump. All of this happened in about two seconds. Ignoring the pain in my left hand and right knee I leapt up and back "into the saddle" in an attempt to minimise my embarrassment. The woman to my right did not react at all, leading me to suspect that she hadn't heard anything through her own headphones, and the woman to my left turned to me, without breaking her stride, and asked if I was OK. I wasn't sure whether to be offended at her unconvincing show of concern or relieved that my clowning had gone largely unnoticed. I said Yes Thanks, and continued to Power Walk (only with a slight limp now), while trying to clean a black rubber mark off my poor iPod.

Afterward, Karen confessed that she had heard thump #1, and had turned in time to see me flying backwards on my knees and making thump #2. She said she hadn't said or done anything further at the time to save my blushes, but that she'd finished her own workout with a fit of the giggles. I left the gym no fitter, no lighter, and with a bruised knee and a scratched iPod. Middle-aged people everywhere be warned: physical exercise can be hazardous to your health.

Back From Dubai

2007-10-25T18:13:00.000+03:00

We got home last night after a fabulous, decadent, and extravagant four days in Dubai. I have lots of stories to tell and pictures to show. but that will have to wait for now as we are currently hosting a bunch of Elliot and Abigail's teenage friends for a last get-together before they leave Riyadh -- for the last time -- on Saturday night.

The barby is lit, the chips are cooking, and my culinary skills are being called for.

More about Dubai soon.

The Cruel Desert

2007-10-21T15:28:00.000+03:00

Yesterday we joined several other Embassy families for a trip to the desert for a picnic. As this was to be Karen's and my last desert trip I was hoping for an experience to remember. We've done lots of such trips during our tour here, and each one was memorable in its own unique way. This one would be no exception, as the desert had one last trick up her sleeve....

Our plan was to hit the desert North of Riyadh, beginning at "Pyramid Dune", and do a little desert driving, or "dune-bashing" before stopping for a nice, leisurely picnic lunch, then bashing our way out again.

Pyramid Dune was "shut". Someone must have seen the kind of damage a convoy of Diplomatic 4x4's can do to a sand dune and decided to protect it from further abuse by erecting a concrete barricade.

With Pyramid Dune closed for business we had no option but to follow the line of the barricade, and that's when we discovered how soft the sand was in this area. The desert is constantly changing: varying degrees of hardness depending on how tightly packed the sand is, how long since the last rain came, and drifting and shifting in the wind. So whenever you go driving in the desert you have to go equipped to deal with your vehicle getting stuck. Most of the nine cars in our convoy had some sort of "unsticking" equipment, ranging from shovels and sand ladders to tow-ropes and winches. This is one of the principal reasons you should never attempt such a trip in a lone vehicle: you always need at least one unstuck vehicle to help you out of a jam.

The sand on this particular day was very soft, and it was not very long before the first vehicle got that sinking feeling, with clouds of sand billowing from its spinning wheels. I wasn't first to get stuck, but I was second.

Me, waiting for my crew to get their act together.

To rescue a car from this situation you dig out the sand around the wheels then put down "sand ladders": short metal ladders that give the tyres something to grip. If that doesn't work, you get your towrope and tow the car out. On this trip we had to do both together.

The Ambassador gives me a push too.

Free at last!

Ahhh, Terra Firma! ...and the more Firma, the less Terra! -- badoom tish!

In the end we had to have sand ladders, towrope, AND people pushing to get my car free. Having gotten mobile again the convoy set off once more, only for someone else to get stuck about ten minutes later.

Now this may LOOK like my car again, but it isn't. Ray has the same model and colour as mine, that's all!

After about two hours of this, with just about every other car getting stuck at least once, we decided to pitch camp in the lee of a very small dune and have our picnic lunch.

It's the Ambassador's shade we crave rather than his charismatic presence.

"Flippin' Eck, I'm glad to get out of that bumpy car for a bit!"

"Yeah, Chris is my Mr. Mayaki when it comes to Poker. What do you mean 'Who?'? Oh come on! You MUST have seen The Karate Kid. 'Wax on, wax off'?"

Lunch over and we pack up all the gear and set off in search of that most welcome of sights: a road. The shifting sands had not finished with us however, and it took us another two hours of getting stuck, shovelling, digging, towing, and pushing before we were reunited with the blessed tarmac.

Yes! The Ambassador's turn to get stuck, and MY turn to give HIM some advice on which gear ratio to select.

With the temperature in the high 30's, the sun beating down, and being over 900m above sea level, this was thirsty, tiring work.

We did eventually find the road, and everyone got home safely. We all filed into the Diplomatic Quarter and gladly accepted the Ambassador's invitation to the Residence for some refreshments and a well-earned sit down.

This is the image of desert driving that I want to remember.

They're Back

2007-10-20T23:26:00.000+03:00

Elliot & Abigail landed safely in Riyadh this evening, after a short delay to their flight. It's great to have them home again and since we picked them up they haven't stopped talking about school and all the teachers and new friends they've made.

Yay! We got our kids back!

So now we're repacking cases for the trip to Dubai tomorrow morning. I will try and post the desert trip story while we're away.

Excited!

2007-10-20T18:30:00.000+03:00

We had a very eventful day in the desert yesterday, and I started writing an entry about it but gave up early in. The children are winging their way to us and we'll be leaving for the airport to pick them up in an hour, so I'm finding it difficult to think about anything else.

Can't wait to see them again, and looking forward to the Dubai trip too. Have got some interesting photos of the desert trip and will complete that posting while we're away -- if I can find a quiet hour.

Meantime will post a photo of our reunion later tonight.

Busy

2007-10-17T14:38:00.000+03:00

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, this week is pretty busy for me. To begin with I'm quite busy work-wise at the moment -- Yes, it's true... I have been known to do the odd bit of work now and again. On top of that there's leaving stuff to think about. We've set a date for our Garage Sale and this weekend (that's tomorrow since Thursday is our Saturday) we're going to start piling up all our ~~crap~~ excess treasures so that our Filipino maid Gina and I can start pricing things up on Saturday.

We've got to get most of that done tomorrow because on Friday we're going on a desert picnic with other Embassy families. Another "last": our last trip to the desert.

Then Elliot & Abigail arrive on Saturday evening, Sunday morning we're off to Dubai, then when we get back there's going to be a mega-sleepover at our house for E & A and their Riyadh buddies, and so it goes on.

These days I find myself wide awake around 5am; not something I'm used to at all. Must be all the stuff buzzing around in my head.

Bye Bye Bahrain

2007-10-15T08:40:00.000+03:00

We got home yesterday evening after a lovely long weekend in Bahrain. As we're approaching the end of our Saudi tour we wanted to make our last Bahrain weekend a memorable one.

Regular readers will know (just search the blog for "Bahrain" if you don't believe me) that the Kingdom of Bahrain is a favourite weekend getaway destination for people who live in Saudi Arabia, Ex-pats and Arabs alike. A couple of days break, away from Saudi restrictions, in relative normality (for a Westerner) can be a great battery recharger. Women do not have to cover, they are allowed to drive (Heaven Forbid!), you can drink in public (well, in hotels and restaurants), and you can even go to the cinema. We didn't on this trip, because the film choice was pretty dire. We were hoping to see The Kingdom -- the new action movie based in Riyadh and starring Jamie Foxx, but it has been banned in Bahrain. We hear that they're showing it in Dubai though, so maybe we'll see it next week. Yes, the cat's out of the bag now isn't it. We're off on another jolly next week, taking the children to Dubai for five days. It'll be expensive, but as with Bahrain, this'll be the last time we'll visit Dubai in the foreseeable future, so we want to say Goodbye in style.

Anyway, back to the weekend just gone. The drive to Bahrain from Riyadh is just under 500km, 400km of which is through desert, so with scenes like this:

"I Spy with my little eye, something beginning with S"

...for four hours you'd better have some quality in-car entertainment. Enter Karen with her podcast-laden iPod, and we while away the journey listening to Jonathan Ross's Radio 2 show and Mark Kermode's movie review show from Radio 5 Live, with Simon Mayo. Karen was an avid Radio 5 listener when we lived in the UK, and when she got her iPod last Christmas was pleased as punch to find all her favourite shows available for download from the BBC. Makes me wonder what she'll do when we return to the UK: podcast or radio proper?

We finally made it to the King Fahd Causeway, and I thought I'd better grab some photos for posterity.

Half-way over the first half of the causeway. In the distance you can see the midway island that constitutes the border between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Left lane for us: Fast Track!

Being a Diplomatic Spouse has its advantages.

The famous "The Fun Starts Here" sign on the Bahrain side of the causeway. It's usually after dark by the time we reach it, so here's a rare daytime photo.

We stayed at the Movenpick Hotel near the airport. We'd been told that the famous Friday Brunch was cancelled this week because of Ramadan, and when we checked in on Thursday Ramadan was indeed still in effect.

Nice place.

The hotel pool with it's "infinity edge" and the sea beyond. There's actually a grassy bank and a short beach between the two, but approaching from the hotel lobby the pool seems to go on forever.

The pool next morning. The "sea" is in fact a man-made lagoon. When the tide is in (see previous pic) the water is only about six inches deep, but at low tide the lagoon empties completely, leaving a much less attractive large sand flat.

On Friday morning we read in the local paper that Eid was officially upon us, as Saudi authorities had officially confirmed a sighting of the New Moon the night before, so from then onwards it was back to life as normal. Too late, alas, for the brunch, but never mind.

Obviously this guy on stilts was in the Mall as part of Eid celebrations. Less obvious was the reason all the young Arabs were running round and round him like a Maypole.

On Friday evening we had a reservation at a restaurant we'd read about called Bam-Bu! (the exclamation mark is part of the name), in Adliya District. The Movenpick has its own fleet of luxury cars, so when you order a taxi you get one of these for a fixed price which you pay at Reception in advance. A little more expensive than regular taxis but not much, and way more stylish. All well and good, except it took the car 15 minutes to turn up, making us late for our reservation. The restaurant wasn't busy so it didn't matter in the end, and the Audi A8 which finally swept us off was very nice. I mentioned in the last posting that Bam-Bu! advertises all the Chinese food you can eat, and all the Stella you can drink for a fixed price. Made it sound a bit chav, but when we got there we were pleasantly surprised. The restaurant was tastefully decorated and nicely lit and with both indoor and outdoor dining areas (although why you'd want to sit out and eat dinner in 80% humidity is beyond me). Their tag-line had led me to expect a buffet at best, and a feeding trough at worst, but not a bit of it. This is an à la carte Asian restaurant serving a fusion of Chinese and Thai dishes. Everything is cooked to order in a spotless kitchen, visible through a large plate-glass window, and only the freshest ingredients are used, with no MSG in sight. In short the food was really good, and all beers and wines are included in the price, so you can spend several hours leisurely sipping wine, ordering the occasional dish to share, and chatting, all for BD13.500, which is around £20 per head. Wish we'd found this place earlier!

Karen enjoying herself at Bam-Bu! Sorry for the poor picture quality but RiyadhCam is not good in low light.

We returned to the hotel for a nightcap in the bar, where a live band (well, boy-girl combo: he on keyboards and laptop backing tracks, she on vocals) were playing, and very drunk Arabs were tottering across the dance floor on their way to and from the toilets. I would've got RiyadhCam out but it was a bit too dark, and I didn't want to get into a fight.

We had a large breakfast on Saturday morning then headed out to the pool, with the intention of spending all day there and skipping lunch. Ah, what little we knew.... It got to mid-morning and we learned that the hotel was doing "Intercontinental Lunch". Guess what that is? Yep, Friday Brunch, but on a Saturday! Yippee! (oh dear, we're already full from breakfast). Quick, let's do another few lengths to work our breakfast off, then get showered and changed and back down!

Yes, I'm afraid to say we partook fully of the brunch, which was superb as always (and the free-flowing bubbly always helps). Considering this was a last-minute thing we actually adapted our plans pretty well, and finished brunch just in time to take another hotel taxi (BMW 750i this time, for which they tried to charged me BD7 instead of BD5 because the other, lesser vehicles were 'not available'. I gave them one of my looks, and they relented) to The Warbler -- a sports bar inside another hotel where they were showing England v Estonia in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. Just what I needed, two hours in a smoky bar drinking pints of Tetley Bitter and watching England on the big screen with a pub-full of England-shirt-wearing Brits (where do they all come from?). When we got back we went straight up to the room for some Rennie and a lie-down. Karen had to take another lift because there was no room for her with me and my stomach.

Sunday morning and after a final couple of hours by the pool we check out and set off for home, and another four hours of straight, featureless road through the desert. Glad I'll never have to do this drive again.

Eid Mubarak Again

2007-10-12T14:04:00.000+03:00

It's official: Ramadan is over and Eid has begun. We read in the paper this morning that, although there have been no official sightings of the New Moon reported in Bahrain last night, there had been in Saudi Arabia, and that was good enough for the authorities here.

Eid's status was further affirmed this morning when the poolside bar opened! That means we have two 'normal' evenings here instead of the feared one.

Having spent the morning at the pool we're now going shopping, and tonight have a reservation at an Asian restaurant called BamBu, where for BD11.500 you can eat all you want and there is all the Stella Artois you can drink -- classy!

Eid Mubarak!

2007-10-10T14:14:00.000+03:00

This is a day or two early but we're going away so I thought I'd get it done now....

Ramadan is about to end: should be either tomorrow or Friday, depending on the sighting of the New Moon. Immediately following Ramadan is a short public holiday called Eid ul-Fitr, and Karen and I are taking advantage of the long weekend (the Embassy will be closed Saturday and Sunday) to pay Bahrain a final visit before we leave the Middle East at the end of November.

"Eid Mubarak" means Happy Eid (pronounced 'Eed'), essentially, and is how you should greet any Muslims you may meet over the next four or five days.

We'll be staying at the Movenpick, which we chose because of its legendary Friday Brunch, but only after booking did we discover that brunch this week is off because of Ramadan :-(

Still, I expect we'll find other things to do: like lying by the pool all day with a cool drink and a good book. I may or may not blog while I'm away, and I may or may not take a camera along for later blogging purposes: depends how the mood takes me.

This is the first of three things that are making me panic about leaving preparations:
1. Weekend in Bahrain
2. Half term with the children (in just over a week's time)
3. Business trip to the U.S. mid-Nov

With those three things my remaining time to get the garage sale, packing etc. organised is woefully short, not to mention fragmented by said events.

Right, that's it then. We'll have a nice relaxing break in Bahrain and then next week I'll go full steam ahead on leaving preparations, so that we can relax again when the children come out the week after. Sounds like a plan...

The Blogging Ambassador

2007-10-09T15:20:00.000+03:00

As you know, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles was the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first half of our tour, and a regular companion of ours on several desert trips. As I mentioned here at the time, he left Riyadh in the early part of this year to take up his new position of Her Majesty's Ambassador to Afghanistan at the British Embassy in Kabul.

I was browsing the website of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office the other day (as you do; well... as I do) when I discovered FCO Blogs and saw Sherard among its contributors. Sherard writes regularly on this site about the situation in Afghanistan and the fight against the Taliban, and, being the technophile I know he is, I was pleased but not surprised to find that he has started posting video clips on the blog to show us some of the country's interesting and significant sites.

A sample clip from Sherard's blog

Take a look. It makes very interesting reading. Maybe Sherard has set an example that other senior diplomats may follow, and we could soon be seeing similar video blogs (or "vlogs", as I believe they're annoyingly called) from other Foreign Office posts.

Children... What Children?

2007-10-07T14:40:00.000+03:00

It just struck me that I haven't mentioned the children since they moved into their new boarding school a month ago, and that some of you may be wondering how they're getting on.

They're doing great; both enjoying life at "Hogwarts", as most of the boarders seem to call it. They're making friends and have joined the school choir. Elliot is impressing everyone with his guitar playing, and they are both taking part in the various weekend activities on offer. In the last month there have been trips to London, Cambridge, Stevenage, and Thorpe Park, and this afternoon Abigail is going Wakeboarding (I wonder if one can opt for Sleepboarding?).

We've had one or two teething troubles with bank accounts, cashpoint cards, and mobile phone top-ups, but apart from that they're having a great time.

I haven't mentioned them up until now because... well... we don't actually miss them half as much as we thought we would. That sounds terrible doesn't it, but it really isn't. We thought we'd have a really hard time getting used to life without them when we returned to Riyadh but it hasn't turned out that way. We do miss them of course, but we know they're being well looked after and that they're enjoying themselves. The flipside for Karen and me is that we've 'got our old lives back', so to speak. It's been sixteen years since we've had the house to ourselves and nobody else's lives to organise apart from our own. It's quite nice. Very nice actually. All of a sudden we've got time on our hands, we're free to socialise and keep whatever hours we like, and we've actually started talking to each other -- Gasp!

Elliot & Abigail are coming back out to Riyadh at half term, which is just two weeks away now, and we can't wait to see them again. We'll have a great week together and they'll be able to say a final Goodbye to their friends here, and then they and we will go back to our new lives once more.

It all feels kind of weird, but not in a bad way. E & A: if you're reading this, we do love you... honest!

One Down, 99 To Go

2007-10-06T10:40:00.000+03:00

I'm feeling pretty good this morning, because I found a buyer for the car at the weekend. Haven't actually done the deal yet; we've agreed to leave it until mid-November for reasons that suit us both, but we've agreed a price, so that's one big and potentially stressful line on my To-Do list that I can now cross out. Hooray!

As if we haven't got enough to do, I was reflecting on our time here over the weekend and I think I've decided that I want a traditional Arab outfit as a souvenir. So now, on top of everything else, I'm planning to go and get measured for my thobe, ghutra and various other garments. I had a conversation with some friends about this several weeks ago, and got the impression that it's quite common for Westerners to get "kitted out". They even gave me some tips on which shops to go to. I have no idea how many garments will be involved: I do know they have at least one undergarment on the top half, and I believe there are white trousers under the thobe too, but I don't have the full details -- yet. I also have no idea how much money we're talking about, but it'll be fun finding out all about it. I'll probably look like a complete wally in it, but it'll be a nice reminder of our time in Saudi, and I'll have an original fancy dress costume at the ready.

RiyadhCam Latest

2007-10-03T13:15:00.000+03:00

Thank goodness for RiyadhCam, that's all I can say. It can be relied upon to provide material for the odd blog post at times when I'm stuck for something more important or interesting to write about. This is one of those times. We have so much coming up over the next few weeks that I'm sitting here in a rabbit-in-the-headlights (that a cliché?) -style daze, unable to focus on one particular thing. Between now and when we leave Riyadh at the end of November we've got to sell unwanted items (including the car), pack up our stuff, find a place to rent in UK for a while, and get the money out of our Saudi bank account before closing it. Not to mention all the farewells we'll be saying to friends over a lemonade or two. Also the children are coming out at half-term for their last visit to Riyadh. We'll spend some of the time here so they can see their friends but we'll also be having a short holiday somewhere else: not telling you where yet. On top of all of that there's Karen's birthday in November, AND I'm going to the U.S. on business for a week, and Yes, it's the same week :-(

So with all that swimming around in my head, it's hard to settle on anything particular to write about, and it's at times like these I'm very grateful to RiyadhCam with its ever-present library of odd photos of this interesting place....

In a country where the eating of Pork is forbidden and it cannot be bought in the shops, it's amusing to see that things like this slip through the net. No wonder it's on Special Offer -- they can't give the stuff away.

I came out of the Dentist's the other day and saw this scruffy old car parked outside the (closed) Pharmacy. Click to see a larger image and look at the sunshade in the windshield: must have been a promotional freebie. Wonder what else he got?

Nothing particularly funny about this shot, but it is Ramadan after all, so I thought you might like a picture of a mosque. This one is on King Abdul-Aziz Rd., or "Old Airport Rd" as it is more commonly known.

That last comment just reminded me that I haven't told you about the multiple names some of the roads have here. Must make a note to explain that more fully in another post.

The End Is Nigh

2007-10-01T10:22:00.000+03:00

"The End Is Nigh"... I really must stop writing in clichés. Earlier today I was re-reading my Ramadan post and found no fewer than three in a single paragraph:

"...most Saudis spend the evening shopping like there's no tomorrow. Shopping Malls heave, traffic is fierce, and every restaurant in town is bulging at the seams. Many (although I'm sure not all) expats avoid the evenings like the plague, as the stress just isn't worth it, but of course there's very little shopping to be had during the day either..."

I was warned against this in my recent creative writing course. I guess it's a habit I'll have to work at, but there's something about them that attracts me. They're clichés because they're so often used, but the reason they are so often used is that they are good. Good descriptions/analogies/metaphors that get it said; that convey a feeling or an image successfully. Why would I spend time coming up with a brand new way of saying something that is so well established by a cliché? ... to be original I suppose. Perhaps the avoidance of cliché matters less when blogging about real life than it does to the novelist, but then if I want to become a novelist one day (which I do) then shouldn't I be training myself into better writing habits?

Enough. I'm sure you don't want to hear my internal bickering any more. What you really want to know is, why 'The End Is Nigh'? The end of what?

The end of our lives in Saudi Arabia, that's what.

It suddenly hit home to me the other day. We have only eight weeks left in "The Magic Kingdom" and then we're off for good, or, as the expats here call it, we're "Going Exit Only" -- meaning we exchange our Exit/Re-entry visas for an Exit Only one. Karen's tour is coming to an end and we have so much to do between now and the end of November I'm sure the time is going to simply fly by. Little everyday things are now starting to poke me into realising that the life we've grown accustomed to here is about to finish: I recently re-joined Not The Riyadh Choral Society after the Summer break they didn't have, but I won't be here for the Christmas Concert they're not planning. Folks at the Embassy are getting together to plan this year's Panto, but Karen and I don't attend the meetings because... well you get the idea.

It's all starting to overwhelm me -- thinking about what we have to do logistically but also beginning to reflect on our time here, the friends we have made, and the memories that will stay with us forever (is that another cliché? Sorry.)

From here on in you can expect our preparations for leaving to dominate the blog, as they will be dominating our lives. Am I even going to have time to write about Karen's next job, selling the car, trying to close the Saudi bank account (not to mention getting the money in it transferred to the UK), holding a garage sale to get rid of our ~~junk~~ pre-owned treasures?

I will also try to make time to review some of the highlights of the last two years and reflect on what this adventure has meant to us.

Better go and do some work now: Duty Calls! (Dammit!)

RiyadhCam: Shopping Oddments

2007-09-29T11:04:00.000+03:00

Just as was thinking I should lighten the mood a little bit after all that ranting about Ramadan, I found a bunch of forgotten photos on RiyadhCam: some taken before I went away to UK/US and a couple taken since I got back, but all interesting in their own quirky way....

Here's the pop-out pocket map of San Francisco that I mentioned in an earlier posting. Didn't stop us getting lost, useless thing! I think I was dazzled by the offer of the built-in compass and pen with light, none of which delivered on their promise.

Here is a clock tower in the Diplomatic Quarter. Up until recently the tower had a traditional analogue clock face on each side, but these were suddenly and inexplicably replaced by giant LED digital watch lookalikes. What were they thinking?

This poster is on the wall of the changing room in Sapphire Tailors, where Elliot and I had our suits made. One look at this reassured me that we were indeed in a Mecca (sorry!) for the fashion-conscious. If you look closely you can see my car keys hanging on the hook.

And now, a short series of odd items for sale in our local supermarket. I bought a tray of these, but after several days of necking the delicious Ginseng beverage I still don't look like the Adonis on the label. Perhaps you're supposed to wear the white headband while you drink it?

It is somebody's job to sit in the stockroom and scribble over pictures of exposed female flesh in black marker pen so that Saudi standards of decency are preserved. I wonder if this kind of work is restricted to immigrant workers or whether the young Saudi men working the checkout aspire to be promoted to "Marker Pen Guy". I know one or two blokes who'd do it for nothing!

They're a little behind the times when it comes to cosmetic treatments.
"Holy Facelift Batman! Who is that woman in the Gimp mask?"

...and my personal favourite. "Aaahh, that's better, I can sit down now."

Finally, some Ramadan decorations in the supermarket...

...and in Kingdom Shopping Centre.

Ramadan

2007-09-26T11:18:00.000+03:00

I offer up the following as a personal perspective, and before anyone says anything I acknowledge that this is my own personal opinion, is based on partial experience and does not represent a rounded view: being neither a Saudi nor a Muslim I am not privy to the family gatherings, celebrations, worship and soul-cleansing that are supposed to make Ramadan so important in the Islamic calendar, so all I can report on is what I experience as an external observer.

Ramadan changes life in Saudi in ways that I've never experienced anywhere else, and I guess the main point of this post is to illustrate to you how the country puts Islam above all else and that, while Saudis may feel the benefit, the expat resident seldom sees any positive indicators of the Ramadan Effect.

So, to begin let's cover the basics of what Ramadan is, and is about. The Holy Month of Ramadan occurs at the same time each year in the Islamic Hijri calendar, but because the Hijri calendar is based on lunar months Ramadan appears to "shift" eleven days earlier each year to those of us who use the Gregorian (solar month) calendar. As I write we are roughly halfway through, and it is expected to finish on or around October 11. Ramadan represents the time when the Qu'ran was revealed to the prophet Mohammed, and the festival is intended to bring Muslims closer to God (or Allah), which is supposed to be achieved by fasting during the hours of daylight, while also abstaining from other activities such as smoking and sexual relations. During the day then, the Muslim is free to contemplate Allah and become more "God-conscious". At sunset, families congregate for Iftar (Breakfast), followed by prayer and more dining. They stay up late, and rise very early to partake of a pre-dawn meal to help them get through the daylight hours. During this month Muslims are also encouraged to be extra kind and charitable.

That, in a nutshell, is what Ramadan is about. It is observed in every country that has a Muslim population, both in democracies with Muslim communities such as the UK and also in Islamic states such as Pakistan, but nowhere is it so strictly observed (and enforced) as in Saudi Arabia. As the home of "The Two Holy Mosques" at Mecca and Medina, Saudi is Islam's Holy Land and the guardian of Islamic ways.

As a non-Muslim expat living in Riyadh I am therefore disconnected from the private, spiritual and family aspects of Ramadan. I read about them and I know what is supposed to go on but I can't see it, so I have to assume it takes place and is meaningful to people. Instead, all I see are the practical, real-world differences that make many expats choose this month for a foreign holiday....

Business / Commerce
Because people are up late and rise early (to eat), and because they cannot eat, drink, or smoke during the day, they tend to be, shall we say, not running on all cylinders where work is concerned. Many businesses allow employees to keep shorter hours, service levels are allowed to slip, and many already-woeful work ethics take another downward step. As you know, I flew back into Riyadh last Thursday (with Saudi Arabian Airlines), but my luggage didn't make it with me. I guess that was to be expected given that I checked it all the way through at Salt Lake City airport, but had to exit Heathrow Terminal 3 and re-enter in order to check in (sans luggage) for the Riyadh flight (this because the London agent has to check my visa).

King Khalid International Airport

So, I waited until the baggage carousel stopped and all the other passengers had picked up their bags and left, then I walked over to the Baggage Services desk to report it. The guard there had me fill in a form and he gave me a case number and a phone number, and told me that they would call my mobile as soon as my luggage arrived.

"Will that be tomorrow?" I asked.
"Yes, tomorrow Insh'Allah or after tomorrow."
"Ah, OK thanks."

No word came the next day or the day after, so on Sunday morning I called the number he gave me. In all I tried calling that number five times over Sunday and early Monday morning, and each time there was either a busy signal or simply no reply. So by mid-morning on Monday I decided to drive up to the airport and enquire in person. Once at Terminal 2 I had to go through the usual airport security check before being allowed into the baggage hall. The disinterested security guard waved me through the metal detector, which immediately went off. I have done this before and last time they completely disregarded it's bleeping so this time I had my phones etc. on me. The guard called me back and said, "Metal, metal.", so I took out my two mobile phones, car keys, and coins and went through again. It bleeped again, probably due to my watch and/or belt, neither of which would set off a Heathrow detector. I looked back and again he said, "Metal metal." I waved my wrist at him to indicate my watch, he shrugged and smiled and I was on my way. Throughout all this he remained reclining in his chair.

I couldn't find a picture of the baggage hall on the internet, so this one of the (only) nice part of the terminal will have to do.

Once in the baggage hall I went over to the desk with my claim form, Diplomatic passport and ID card in hand. There was no-one there and the lights were off. There was a small office to the side with its door open, so I gingerly stuck my head in looking for signs of life. A guard was lying on a row of chairs with his shoes off, fast asleep. I coughed politely and he woke up, saw the piece of paper in my hand, and then called a Pakistani porter in a green boiler suit to open up the luggage store. I went in with the porter and immediately found my two bags, which had probably been in there for three days. I brought them back to the desk and signed a piece of paper which the bleary-eyed guard had pushed at me. He never checked my ID.

Shopping
Some shops remain closed during the day until around 4pm, and some open but with different hours than normal, and each shop follows its own rules, so if you want to know when a certain shop will be open you have to go there and read the sign on the door. Once open in the evening all shops stay open very late, usually until one or two in the morning. Food and drink establishments like McDonald's and Starbucks do not open at all until after sunset. Having recovered from the "rigours" of their working day and with a now-full stomach, most Saudis spend the evening shopping like there's no tomorrow. Shopping Malls heave, traffic is fierce, and every restaurant in town is bulging at the seams. Many (although I'm sure not all) expats avoid the evenings like the plague, as the stress just isn't worth it, but of course there's very little shopping to be had during the day either, so for us, Ramadan = no shopping, and remember: shopping is the only thing to do here.

Muttawa
The Religious Police are out in force during Ramadan to make sure all the restrictions are being observed, and anyone -- including us -- caught eating or drinking in public during daylight hours will be arrested and may be jailed or deported.

Driving
Ah, my favourite subject: driving in Riyadh (search the blog for other stories). Riyadh driving is often a dangerous, seat-of-the-pants affair. It's dog eat dog, survival of the fittest. You have to have eyes in the back of your head, clean mirrors and plenty of power in reserve to accelerate out of danger, and good brakes. Young Saudis treat the roads like a demolition derby, overtaking and undertaking takes place at the same time, new lanes are invented when they get bored of the marked ones. Now imagine all that, only now with starving, nicotine-deprived, irritable and tired drivers all racing to get to Iftar, and Riyadh's roads in the afternoon are a battlefield. Karen and I went out yesterday and narrowly missed collision several times. The air is thick with angry horn blasts, and we even witnessed a Road Rage incident with two thobe-clad Saudis fighting by their cars at the traffic lights and causing an even worse traffic jam.

Talk about Good Will to All Men.

I am not wishing to disrespect anyone's Religious choice (noting that Saudis do not, in fact, have a choice), but I am glad that this is the last Ramadan I will have to endure for a while.

He Talks!

2007-09-23T22:34:00.000+03:00

While in our Provo offices last week I was given the opportunity to give an interview for Novell Open Audio.

The folks at Novell Open Audio keep an eye (or should that be an ear?) out for anything and everything cool going on at Novell that our user community might be interested in, and then they drag in the people responsible and get them to talk about the cool products, technologies, and projects that they're working on.

So, if you're interested in hearing about what I do for a living, or if you're just curious to hear how I sound, click here. The interview is, by its nature, technical and some might say a bit geeky, but I know there are more than a few geeks among my readership, so I expect for every one of you that gives up trying to understand what we're talking about after five minutes there'll be another who sticks with it to the bitter end.

Sunday: Zion National Park

2007-09-22T06:56:00.000+03:00

We stayed Saturday night at the Crystal Inn in Cedar City. Nice, clean, and comfortable, and we spent an amusing evening in the Shakespearean-themed Bard Eating and Drinking Establishment that was part of the hotel. The menu listed the wines as "Mead", and the beers as "Ale", and we ordered The Bard Burger and Ye Olde Fish & Chips.

Sunday morning and time for the last leg of the trip: a visit to Zion National Park before driving the final 250 miles to Provo.

The view on the way to Zion

Zion is around 20 miles south of Cedar City, and there are three very different ways to enter the park. The West Entrance is the first one we came to but we drove past on the advice of the hotel clerk, who had told us the South Entrance was by far the best. Once we got there we realised that the advice was good. The West and South Entrances are not linked by road inside the park, so whichever one you go in you have to go as far as you can and then retrace your steps out again.

If you're interested you can get a nice map and guide at the National Parks Service website.

The South Entrance in Springdale

The South was better because there is a small town called Springdale, with lots of nice hotels and shops, and further up the road takes you into Zion Canyon: the central and most popular part of the park. The road into Zion Canyon is open only to the shuttle buses that run every 5-6 minutes, so you have to park at the Visitor Center and ride up the rest of the way. Before we did that we drove along the road leading out via the East entrance, because half way along the road becomes a tunnel cutting right through the huge mountains, and we wanted to go through it just for fun.

The tunnel is around a mile long and quite narrow, so if large vehicles like RVs or buses want to go through the rangers have to stop the traffic at the other end.

After the tunnel we stopped for a break short of reaching the East Entrance and then went back the way we had come, back through the tunnel and to the Visitor Center, where we parked and got the bus to Zion Canyon.

The road to the East Entrance. This was our turnaround point.

The view on the road back down to the Visitor Center. The mountains have a stunning range of colour: pink, yellow, brown, blue, orange, purple all mixed together in some places.

The main activity in the canyon is the hike up to the Emerald Pools: a series of three tiered pools that feed each other via waterfalls. The signs warned of dangerous precipices and strenuous hikes to the middle and upper pools, but that didn't scare three hard cases like us. Indeed, we had missed out on seeing a waterfall in Yosemite so that spurned us on past the warning signs.

The bottom of the canyon and the start of the Emerald Pools hike.

We got to the lower pool to find it almost dry, and fed by a pathetic trickly of water from the wall above. It turns out these falls also dry up in Summer, fed as they are by melting winter snow.

What should be a tumbling waterfall drips disappointingly down to the lower pool.

But by now we were halfway up so we soldiered on to the top. It was a hot day and my water ran out as we neared the top, but the atmosphere at the top pool was calm, quiet, and cool, so we had a good long rest there before starting back down.

Stunning scenery along the trail.

We left the park around 3.30pm and it took us another four hours driving to reach Provo, where it was time to put our work heads back on :-(

Zion National Park is a beautiful place and I hope to return one day in the early Spring to see the waterfalls and pools in full flow. Ooh... BrainShare's coming up in March... !

Saturday: Nevada Desert

2007-09-21T20:53:00.000+03:00

After our day in Yosemite we'd spent the night at the Austria Hof Lodge in Mammoth Lakes CA. A ski lodge which had a great bar and restaurant but which failed to deliver on the basics, like in-room coffee and hot water.

Saturday's agenda was always going to be a tough one: over 400 miles across the wastes of the Nevada desert.

This was our view most of the day

I'd had it worked out that we'd drive on the Extraterrestrial Highway, to the North of the "test area" otherwise known as Area 51, and reputed hiding place of secretly captured alien spacecraft. Our car's SatNav, however, had different ideas, and our female Australian-accented guide kept telling us, "A better route is available". Foolishly we listened to her, and before we knew it we had gone considerably off course and found ourselves headed towards Las Vegas. We pulled over at a junction by a small building that at first we hoped was a gas station, but which on closer inspection turned out to be the Cottontail Ranch brothel, long-since closed down judging by the boarded up windows.

Damn! If we'd only we gotten here five years earlier, the brothel might have been open for business.

We decided to turn left instead of right towards Las Vegas, in an attempt to return to our original route: we were hoping to see something of Area 51, or get buzzed by some F-111's, or at least see a diner with some ET cuddly toys for sale. By this time we were low on petrol so the left turn was a bit of a gamble, but Kevin was driving and his logic was that, the faster we went, the quicker we'd get to a gas station, and he bombed along for around an hour at, although I won't go into details, considerably faster than the speed limit. I questioned the sense of this but not strongly enough to effect any change in our plans, so instead I sat in the back and quietly fretted about how we would survive if we were to run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere.

My worries were unfounded, as it turned out (although Kevin had no way of knowing that! -- how annoying.), and around 70 miles later we cruised into a small town in the middle of the desert called Tonopah Station, and we gave our trusty Chevy Trailblazer a well-needed drink of petrol.

Check out the sign: only in Nevada!

Our tank refilled, BP took over the driving as we turned right onto Extraterrestrial Highway. Three things happened within the next two hours: we didn't find any sign of either Area 51 or an Area-51-themed diner, I fell asleep, and BP was done for speeding.

There's no justice is there? There's Kevin, bombing along for around an hour at, let's say, slightly over the speed limit, then BP takes over and almost immediately gets copped. We were cruising along when a police patrol car passed us in the opposite direction, flashing his lights. We thought we'd got away with a warning, but one glance in the rear view mirror was enough to convince us that yes, he had turned around and was now chasing us. It was unusual to see anything coming the other way, let alone a patrol car.

When we finally pulled over the officer sauntered up to our window and told us that he'd clocked BP doing 84mph in a 70mph zone. Our revelation that we were British and on our way from VMworld in San Francisco to Provo, Utah drew interested oohs and aahs from the officer, and for a while we thought we'd charmed him into letting us off with a warning, but then he returned to the driver's window to inform us that he was writing BP a citation, but citing 80mph rather than 84mph in order to reduce the fine. BP was given a ticket for $87, to be paid to the Alamo County Court. He called them some days later and ended up paying $90, including a $3 surcharge for paying by credit card.

BP's citation

We spent the rest of the day driving at exactly 70mph.

The SatNav's trip computer. Note the maximum speed (Kev?), and the current, post-citation speed.

Nevada is great and all, but the scenery is a bit... well... flat. It's no wonder we'd tried to "speed" through it.

On Way Home

2007-09-20T10:59:00.000+03:00

I'm sitting in The Three Bells cafe/bar at Heathrow's Terminal 3. My United flight from Chicago landed at 6am and the Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Riyadh doesn't leave until 12.30, to I have over six hours to kill at the airport. Luckily there's wireless internet access here so I've got no excuses for not posting a blog entry have I?

Almost home now, after what will have been just under three weeks away from the Magic Kingdom. I land at around eight forty pm local time tonight, and as Karen has just reminded me we're in the midst of Ramadan, so I'm not likely to get anything to eat or drink during the six-hour flight. Good job I've got plenty of stored fat to live on.

On Friday of last week we began our road trip from San Francisco to Provo, Utah via two national parks and the Nevada desert. First stop was Yosemite National Park, which is just under two hundred miles east of SF. Beautiful place with stunning views, quiet, clean air -- a great place to visit. We were particularly looking forward to seeing Yosemite Falls: one of the world's tallest waterfalls, but when we got there we learned that it dries up in Summer, so all we saw was a tall rock with a stain down it. Oh well, never mind.

Some photos of Yosemite:

Lots of winding mountain roads and great weather. Made me wish I was cruising on a Harley, but then where would all the suitcases go?

This pic is near the Yosemite Falls that weren't... falling, that is. I guess I should have taken a photo of the dried up falls but I didn't for some reason. I'll ask Kevin and BP for one of theirs.

I'll cover the Saturday in Nevada and Sunday in Utah when I get back and have caught up on some sleep.

PS today is our 21st wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary Karen xxx

The End Of The Road

2007-09-17T08:11:00.000+03:00

Sunday, September 16 (late)...

We have successfully completed our road trip San Francisco - Yosemite National Park - Mammoth Lakes - Nevada Desert - Cedar City - Zion National Park - Provo. The trip took us three days and was around 1100 miles long.

I'm too tired to cover it in full right now, but wanted at least to let you know we got the end in one piece and had a good time (although BP is $87 poorer: story to come).

We had sparse internet access and rarely any mobile phone signals along the way, so this is the first real chance I've had to post anything. I've got lots of photos and stories to tell, but like I said I don't have the energy tonight.

Tomorrow we start our two days of meetings at the Novell office here in Provo. I will try to post again before we leave.

Final Day in SF

2007-09-14T08:41:00.000+03:00

It's Thursday and the VMworld conference is over. Very enjoyable -- if you like that sort of thing. Kevin had booked a rental car for the next leg of our trip with a 6pm pick up, so at 5.30 we set out to walk to the Hertz office to collect it. We arrived at 6.01 to discover that they close at 6pm on the dot. The staff were coming out of the office and refused to let us in to collect the car. After some remonstrating and pleading with them we realised that we weren't going to get anywhere, so we went around the corner and a couple of blocks along to Avis in hopes of picking up a car on spec, knowing that if this didn't work out we could still go back to Hertz on Friday morning. Annoying but still do-able.

Luckily enough Avis are open til 7pm and the very helpful lady behind the counter was pleased to provide us with the same type of vehicle. BP had planned to drive out of the city to visit some friends, so he took the wheel and we pulled out of the garage and turned right into the street, only to narrowly avoid a collision with a BMW and a very embarrassing incident: crashing one of Avis's cars right outside their showroom. Panic over, and BP dropped Kevin and me in Chinatown and went on his merry way.

Kevin and I wandered through Chinatown and found a(nother) camera shop, this one offering 50 - 70% off all lenses. Just for a laugh we went in and enquired about the price of the Nikon 70-300 zoom: the lens BP bought from Kenny on Monday for $215 (discounted from $299). This guy's price was $199, but when I said I was asking on behalf of a friend he said, "Tell your friend he can have it for $169." We still haven't decided whether to tell BP or not!

We had a very fine chinese meal at the Imperial Palace restaurant in Chinatown, but that was three hours ago and now I want another one.

Tomorrow sees the start of the second leg of our U.S. trip: the Road Trip. We have a team meeting at Novell's Provo Headquarters next Monday & Tuesday, and rather than bum around for three days and then fly to Utah we have decided to drive.

Our 981 mile trip starts tomorrow morning at 8am. We will head East out of SF and drive to Yosemite National Park (camera gear at the ready). We'll spend the day in the park and then spend the night at a nearby hotel. Then on Saturday we drive around 400 miles across the Nevada Desert into southern Utah, past the notorious "Area 51" military testing site and rumoured location of captured alien spacecraft. I'll post pictures of some flying saucers here if you (and I for that matter) are very lucky. In reality I don't expect we'll get anywhere near it. Then on Sunday we visit Zion National Park in soutern Utah before driving the final leg to Provo, when it'll be back to work.

Our route. We must be mad!

I don't know if I'll get an internet connection until we hit Provo, so there may or may not be updates for the next three days. You can count on a story, and pictures, by early next week though.

Out and About in San Francisco

2007-09-13T07:55:00.000+03:00

Hi, sorry for not posting anything for a while but we've been busy. The VMworld conference is in full swing and we're mingling with the 10,000 other attendees to discuss embedded virtualization technologies, server consolidation, and datacenter automation: requests on a postcard please if you would like to hear more about these fascinating topics.

We're staying at The Palace Hotel. Here's where I have breakfast.

We had a free day on Monday before the conference to acclimatise, so Kevin, BP and I thought we'd do some exploring around the city.

The Apple Store: first stop for any self-respecting gadget freaks.

Kevin couldn't resist playing with Photo Booth.

I always said he was a Big Head.

Next on the agenda was to catch the cable car from Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf. San Francisco is famous for its cable cars, which can climb the steep hills by gripping onto an underground cable moving at a constant speed. The driver stands in the middle of the car and accelerates, brakes and stops by dextrous use of two big levers: grip the cable to go, let go to coast, and the other lever to brake.

He's not messing about: he always looks like this.

The car stopped at a crossroads, so I quickly jumped off and took this pic then jumped back on again before it took off again. As you can see, when the seats fill up you have to stand on the side platform and cling on for dear life.

Pic courtesy of Kevin. Less than perfect composition, but when you're hanging out the side of a cable car (see Kev's other arm above my head) it's a case of point, shoot, and hope for the best.

Uh-oh! Another car coming towards us. Breathe in everybody!

One of SF's less pleasant claims to fame is that it has more homeless people per capita than any other U.S. city.

If you look closely you'll see a ginger cat sleeping on top of the pile. There's another one under the blue towel.

You see sights like this on every street.

We alighted at Fisherman's Wharf and walked along the parade of shops leading to the sea front.

We made the mistake of entering Kenny's camera shop. BP only went in for a filter and came out an hour later with a zoom lens (and a filter). Some salesman, Kenny.

Kenny just never gave up. He was very entertaining, telling us about when he lived in South Kensington years ago and maintaining that his photos of London (which he had in a wallet behind the counter) were better than BP's.

BP thought he'd negotiated a really good discount on the lens, but Kenny doesn't look too unhappy as he writes out the receipt.

Time to try out the new lens, so we walked to the end of the pier to get a close-(ish) look at Alcatraz.

The Rock.

The famous prison island has been decommissioned for many years and is now a tourist attraction. I went there the last time I was in SF and took the opportunity to be locked in one of the pitch black Solitary cells, but only for around 30 seconds. Not sure I could have handled a longer stretch.

A line of Pelicans flying across the bay.

We walked all up and down the various piers, and after Alcatraz we walked right down to Pier 39 almost a mile away to see the Sea Lions sunbathing.

I wish I'd taken a video here so you could hear the deafening noise of 200 Sea Lions all making Sea Lion noises at once.

After all that walking we needed some sustenance and a nice sit down so we had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39. Then we hopped on a tram to travel across the city from the North end to Castro in the South West. Another SF claim to fame is its large LGBT population (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender), and as it turned out Castro is Gay Central. We kind of knew this in advance but didn't know what to expect.

Hmm.. I wonder where he's headed?

When we got there it was like we'd wandered onto the set of the Village People's latest pop video. I think the only one we didn't spot was the Red Indian.

"Bowsy-Wowsy!"

We marched briskly and manfully past the gay book shops and erotic art boutiques on our way to our next stop: Haight Ashbury. Haight, according to my handy guide book complete with pop-out maps, compass, and built in pen with light, is the Mecca for hippies old and new. I knew from the pop-out map that Haight was a few blocks North of Castro, so I led the way with Kevin and BP following on. Kevin had his Bluetooth GPS receiver linked to Google Maps on his Blackberry (geek) and BP likes to follow his instincts, a system we like to call BPS. What could go wrong in such company?

We'd walked from the horizon to where I shot this picture before realising that we were actually going South, and had actually sweated up steep hills for the last 30 minutes in the wrong direction. Don't ever ask us for directions.

Having been given our correct bearings by a helpful local we waited, panting at a bus stop and then rode back the way we had come. After leaving the bus we had another half mile walk to find Haight St. Oh my poor feet!

Haight St. delivered on its promise: a line of decidedly groovy shops selling everything from Grateful Dead T-shirts to hubbly bubbly pipes. It's your one-stop place for outlandish apparel, piercings, and hard drugs.

We wisely decided against going in here.

I did find a really amazing music store. It was an Aladdin's Cave for any guitarist, with electric guitars new and vintage covering every wall. It was a good job I didn't have Elliot with me: I may never have gotten out again.

Jealous, Elliot?

With our throbbing feet refusing to go any further we decided to call it a day and caught the bus back to the hotel. My legs are aching now just thinking about it. Still, at least I got some exercise.

Don't Call it "Frisco".

2007-09-10T01:45:00.000+03:00

Just checked in at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco after a ten-hour flight that actually took twelve and a half hours. The Captain noticed a problem with one of the fuel pumps as we pushed back from the stand at Heathrow this morning and we ended up sitting on the tarmac for 2 1/2 hours before finally taking off (the plane sat on the tarmac: we stayed in our seats).

I travelled with a friend from work and we'd arranged to have the aisle seats of the middle section of Row 40, and when we boarded we found that we had "book-ended" a newly-wed couple in the middle two seats. When they realised we were travelling together they asked if we would like to sit together, but we politely declined as it would have meant one of us moving to a middle seat, and when you've got an aisle seat on a long-haul flight, you don't give it up in a hurry. They must've thought we were a bit weird penning them in like that but they took it in good humour. The bride wore a black T-shirt with "Just Married" on it in silver glitter, presumably in hopes of getting some bubbly from the cabin crew. It worked.

Our taxi ride from the airport was white-knuckle: I think the driver must race Indy Cars in his spare time.

The hotel seems very nice but I'm too tired to take it in right now. As I write it's 3.50pm local time, which is 11.50pm in the UK and 1.50 am tomorrow in Riyadh, so I think I'd better go now and get a couple of hours' sleep so that I don't conk out over dinner this evening.

How Are They/We Getting On?

2007-09-07T11:07:00.000+03:00

It's Friday and the children will be starting their third day at the new boarding school. They have been in touch every evening so far to let us know how they're getting on, and everything seems to be going very well. Elliot has found a band to join, and says his first Media Studies lesson was great: "We just analysed films for the whole lesson!".
Abigail was late for registration on her first day because she got lost, but that's to be expected in such a big unfamiliar place. She has also had her first hockey practice and the teacher said she was a natural.

Karen and I are enjoying ourselves, kind of. We went to the Theatre Royal in Windsor the other night to see The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie, followed by a Thai supper. The play was OK, but a little old-fashioned and predictable, and the supper was tasty and very fast; we were in and out in 25 minutes. We are missing the children of course, but personally I feel diverted by our new-found freedom. All of a sudden we have lots of time on our hands and just ourselves for company, and that's a heady combination when you're staying right in the heart of a great town like Windsor. We can step out of the flat on a whim, walk through a short alley, and be right amongst the bars and restaurants of Windsor High St: lovely!

When we leave Riyadh (at the end of November!) we may well need to return to the UK for a while before Karen's next posting (No, we don't know where yet), and we plan to rent a place in Windsor again. In fact, we spent an enjoyable Wednesday afternoon walking around town looking at possible properties, streets, and locations.

While we're in the UK we can pretend like we're on holiday on our own, but I think it's going to really hit home when we return to Riyadh and it's just the two of us in the house.

I returned to work yesterday and am in the office at the moment, so I'd better go now before somebody important spots me blogging when I should be working!

They're In

2007-09-05T12:26:00.000+03:00

Yesterday we got the children settled into their rooms at the new school, and today they are starting their first day of lessons, while Karen and I wonder what to do with ourselves.

We spent yesterday afternoon talking to the staff, sorting out a few bits of last-minute paperwork, unloading the car and helping them unpack their things. All the staff were very nice: positive, light-hearted, helpful, and really gave me a reassuring feeling that our children would be well looked after.

Unpacking Abigail's stuff

...pretty soon it looked just as tidy as her old bedroom!

The girl's and boy's boarding areas are quite separate, each being accessed from the ground floor only and from different staircases. I'm sure this is a good thing for the school, as it helps to ensure proper behaviour etc., but for parents helping both a boy and a girl into their rooms at the same time it meant a good deal of stairclimbing with heavy bags. Quite a workout! My legs are stiff this morning from the exertion.

NOW he feels at home.

After unpacking we joined all the other parents in a large room for an address by the Deputy Head (the Head is on sick leave) and by the boarding staff, then we went with the children to the Refectory for Supper. It was my first "school dinner" in a lot of years, and as Abigail pointed out, her first... ever, as she'd always had packed lunches before. I won't say it was delicious but it was perfectly edible, with a choice of chicken kebabs or scampi.

Abigail in her new room. Note the new haircut!

I was so busy stuffing my face I forgot to take a picture of supper in the refectory. Sorry (burp).

Supper over, it was time for us to leave and for the children to stay. We hugged in the Reception hall, and Karen and I were a good deal more emotional than Elliot & Abigail, who I think by then were so excited and in a spin with all the activity that they just wanted us to go so they could get on with settling in and meeting new friends.

College Chapel

Since returning to our rented flat in Windsor I have not had any strong feelings of missing them, yet. Elliot phoned to tell us he'd met another student whi is the lead singer with a band called Mock Heroic, and that they were happy to have a second guitarist, so that helped him feel better about everything. Karen also spoke to Abigail last night, who had texted to say her room-mate had arrived and that the "corridor was chaotic!".

As I write this on Wednesday morning they will be starting lessons on their first full day. For me it feels OK, like they're away on a sleepover and will be back soon. But the full realisation will come over the next few days when they don't come back. It will be made easier while we're still away -- Karen in UK and me going to the U.S. on Sunday for a business trip -- but I'm not looking forward to how things will feel when we're both back in Riyadh and suddenly we are at home, and the children are thousands of miles away.

Enough whining from me. The children will have a fantastic time, superb new opportunities, and a top education, and while Karen and I may be flung to all corners of the world over the next few years, they will have a solid, consistent environment for both their education and their friendships.

Busy Few Days

2007-09-04T00:21:00.000+03:00

It's now Monday evening and our last evening together with the children. They're so excited about moving into the school they've already gone to bed; not sure how to feel about that.

Our busy few days started on Wednesday evening, when the childrens' best friends Alix and Josh came round with their parents to say a final farewell before we left for the airport.

Last night in Riyadh: Josh, Abigail, Alix, and Elliot

Thursday morning and a sleepless overnight flight later we land at Heathrow, where I pick up our coffee-stained car. I'm too tired to reject it and wait for a replacement to be found so we moan to the security guard about it and get on our way. Our first port of call is to Karen's Mum, where we crash out for a couple of hours (during which the aforementioned parking ticket is issued), then we spend the rest of the day shopping and settling into our rented flat in Windsor before going out to dinner with Mary (the Mother-In-Law).

On Friday afternoon we went to the school to kit the children out at the Uniform Shop: skirts, blouses, jumpers, socks, ties, shirts, football kit, rugby kit, hockey kit, netball kit, swimming costumes, track suits, fleeces, and a blazer for Abigail. I won't tell you how much it all cost because it still brings a tear to my eye even now. They do look good though....

Then in the evening it was round to our Riyadh friends Karen & Adrian for dinner and drinks, and because they live quite a way from us, a sleepover too. You may remember Adrian from our Bahrain fishing trip. It turned out he'd been fishing again that day, and fed us two barbequed trout that he'd caught -- delicious!

The children spent the rest of the evening watching rock videos on the Kerrang! channel.

On Saturday we said goodbye to our hosts and once again braved the M25, only to join the back of a ten-mile tailback which necessitated a lengthy detour. In the afternoon we went to my brother's house to celebrate my niece Isabelle's third birthday.

Isabelle's a cheeky monkey

She loves her trampoline

Blow!

Sunday, and it's back to the school for Mass at 10.30, followed by coffee and a chat with the staff, then on the way back we stopped for lunch with Karen's cousin Sue, husband Trevor and their two cute girls: Daisy & Ruby.

The children couldn't go in uniform because it was all off having name labels sewn in. You can see the chapel in the background.

Abigail, Daisy, Elliot, and Ruby

Abigail with Daisy

And finally today (Monday), we spent the day doing some final shopping for hockey sticks, rugby boots, and toiletries. Elliot and I saw The Bourne Ultimatum while Karen and Abigail got their hair done, then in the evening it was round to Karen's sister Laura's for fish & chips with her, Mary, and Lucas.

Abigail and Lucas tucking in (note Abigail's new hairdo).

Elliot and Lucas

So, off to bed now. Tomorrow is D-Day. We'll be spending the afternoon at the school before... gulp... leaving the children there in the evening. Tomorrow evening Karen and I will be on our own.

Car trouble

2007-09-02T01:46:00.000+03:00

Flippin' eck! We've only been in the UK for a couple of days and already we've rented a car whose interior was covered in spilt coffee stains, got a parking ticket, scratched the door in a multi-storey car park and spent about twelve hours stuck in traffic jams.

I'm starting to miss Riyadh driving: at least you get to go fast there.

Will tell you more about our activities so far in the next post, need to go to bed now.

Children's Last Day in Riyadh

2007-08-29T11:29:00.000+03:00

We're flying to London overnight tonight, so today I'm busy packing and getting together all the paperwork we need to take with us for the new school. Abigail is at home with me and already packed, and Karen and Elliot are working at the Embassy (Elliot determined to earn that last bit of extra cash before he leaves).

Last night they had a farewell get-together with a few friends, kindly hosted by their best friends Alix & Josh (well, by their parents to be accurate).

Elliot & Abigail saying 'Au revoir' to their mates

It is actually 'Au revoir' rather than 'Goodbye', because they'll be back to visit at half-term, but then that really will be it for Saudi as far as they're concerned.

Got to go now, the case won't pack itself unfortunately. Will send updates from my travels.

Eight days and counting

2007-08-27T14:06:00.000+03:00

Another major life change is looming in our near future. On Tuesday next week Elliot & Abigail will move into their new school in the UK, as full boarders. It sounds strange to me even as I write the words, it's so hard to imagine day-to-day life without them.

It is undoubtedly the best thing for them: a very good, private school in England that will not only give them the best education but will also give them some more consistency in their social lives. It will mean that, wherever Karen and I are sent to next, they can continue their education and network of friends uninterrupted. I also think it will be great for their self-confidence; not that our two were ever wanting in that area.

No, the people who will be hit hardest are Karen and me. It feels like I'm getting old before my time. The offspring shouldn't be flying the nest this early. I suppose they're not really, but it will feel like it. What will we do left on our own all of a sudden, after sixteen years of having kids in the house? Perhaps we'll grow to enjoy our new-found freedom: partying til the wee small hours, playing loud music, crawling out of bed at 11am with a hangover... Hold on, we do that already!

I just know the next eight days are going to fly by. We travel to London on Thursday so before then we'll be busy with preparations: packing, trying to stop them taking too much with them, dealing with school paperwork, planning a uniform-shopping frenzy, opening bank accounts, buying mobile phone sim cards, arranging to meet up with friends when we get there.

They'll be taking their own laptops with them, and will have to get used to the school's regulated internet access: no more MSN Messenger for example. Elliot has SUSE Linux on his, and Windows XP in a VMware virtual machine (sorry to get technical). I wish both him and the Systems Administrator the best of luck trying to troubleshoot that lot. He keeps me busy and I do that stuff for a living.

The other slight pothole in the road is that, days after taking delivery of Elliot's new, dry-clean-only suits from Sapphire Tailors, we receive a letter from the school saying the all items of clothing must be machine-washable and tumble-dryable.

Doh!

Hot Fiction

2007-08-26T17:07:00.000+03:00

Have you ever read a book so good the action seems to leap out of the page? Well with all my recent reads the pages have leapt out of the book. This has less to do with heart-stopping action, carefully-rounded characters or twisting plot than it has to do with the good old Saudi weather.

In short, it's so hot here you can't take a book to the pool without the intense heat melting the glue that holds the spine of the book together. This has happened to me with the last four books I've read. There I am, lying back with a cool drink by my side as I dry off from my last dip, losing myself in a good book (and I've read some good books lately), when, all of a sudden, a page loosens itself and does that zigzaggy float down to a soft landing on my not insignificant stomach. There is very little in life less irritating than that, believe me.

Has this ever happened to you, or is it just me? I must be doing something wrong because it hasn't happened to Karen and she's usually there next to me. Maybe I open my books in a funny way. Maybe I spend too long on each page. Maybe I don't fidget enough, causing the weakest part of the spine to be exposed to a particular ray of sunshine for too long.

I'm at a loss what to do. Reading by the pool is one of my main reasons for going, but I hate it when a book I really like starts coming apart in my hands. When, two-and-a-bit years ago, we found out we were going to be living in Riyadh for two years, I never once thought that this would be one of the principal hardships. Threat of terrorism, yes. Absence of cinemas, yes. Prohibition of alcohol, of course. But never disintegrating books.

GCSE Results

2007-08-25T09:59:00.000+03:00

After much email-checking yesterday we finally got the second half of Elliot's GCSE results:

Maths B
French B
Music B
Geography C
English Lit. C

So, combine that with the first half:

Physics A
IT A
Biology B
English Lang. B
Chemistry C

...and he has two A's, five B's and three C's.

Considering Elliot has a slight learning difficulty, requiring extra time in some exams and some individual attention in the classroom, we think these results are excellent and really show how hard he worked on his preparation since the mocks.

The C in Geography has helped decide on Physics as his last A Level subject, so at the new school he will be studying Maths, Physics, Information Technology, Media Studies, and Religious Studies for A Level.

Well done Elliot!

No News Yet

2007-08-23T18:44:00.000+03:00

Been nursing my Blackberry all day today, waiting for the school to email the second half of Elliot's GCSE results, but nothing.

The results were released today in the UK, and Elliot has been instant messaging some of his UK buddies to find out how they got on. They have received their results all in one go, so Elliot has a slight advantage in having received the first half of his results a couple of weeks ago.

It looks like the school is following the same pattern as they did last time, which suggests that the email will come on tomorrow, late morning.

What we're feeling is more excited anticipation more than worry; we're pretty sure his second set are going to be similar to the first, but it's never for sure until you see it in black & white is it?

More news tomorrow, I hope.

Mmm, Cake!

2007-08-22T11:16:00.000+03:00

Refusing to be upstaged by Elliot's GCSE results, Abigail's star shone stickily yesterday in the shape of a scrumptious Blueberry Cake that she baked all by herself (with Karen supervising).

She chose the Blueberry Cake from a little book of cake recipes that came with BBC Good Food magazine, and baked it yesterday afternoon once we'd got back from the supermarket with all the ingredients.

My memories of the bringings-home of primary school cookery lessons made me a bit apprehensive as the plate was extracted ceremonially from the fridge, but I needn't have worried. This was the big-girl Abigail at work, times have changed. So, instead of the tupperware container full of unrecognisable brown sludge I was expecting, out came a very professional-looking Blueberry sponge cake.

The picture of the perfect result lays down the challenge...

...but Abigail meets it head on and produces an exact likeness

You think it looks good? You should taste it! The sponge was light and fluffy, there were just the right amount of blueberries both inside and on the top, and the icing was to die for: a kind of cheesecake flavour icing containing Philadelphia and sour cream, believe it or not. It may not sound very appetising but it is absolutely delicious.

Ready?

There's only one word for it: Yum!

We all had our first slices together yesterday evening, and as I write I'm tucking into my second, Elevenses slice, accompanied by a Starbucks triple latte. I can feel the top button of my jeans straining under renewed pressure, but my soul's in a nice place so that's OK.

Want your own? Here's the recipe.

That's My Boy!

2007-08-21T23:05:00.001+03:00

Dear Reader, I owe you -- and Elliot -- an apology.

Several family members have reprimanded me for forgetting something very important. There I was, reminiscing about the -- to quote The Beano -- slap up nosh we enjoyed at the Movenpick Brunch, and I forgot to tell you about the news we received only the day before.

The first half of Elliot's GCSE results arrived.

Yes, his results are coming to us in two chunks because the British School spreads its subjects over two examination boards: half of the ten subjects are handled by Cambridge (iGCSE), and the other half by EdExcel. I like to think it was the prospect of waiting until they were all in that stopped me mentioning it before, but to be honest I probably just forgot: my bad.

So, without any further ado, here is Part One of Elliot's results:
Physics A
Information Technology A
English Language B
Biology B
Chemistry C

We're all very pleased with these, and congratulations to Elliot for working so hard to get the best grades he could. He certainly earned his new guitar.

The second half: Maths, Geography, English Literature, Music, French, should be with us in the next few days. Elliot's chosen A Level subjects are IT, Maths, Physics or Geography and Media Studies (he can't do both Physics and Geography because of the school's timetable). So, good results so far and we're keeping everything crossed for Maths and Geography in the next batch.

Watch this space.

Suited & Booted

2007-08-19T16:39:00.000+03:00

Elliot and I are now the proud owners of our new tailor-made suits. Picked them up yesterday from Sapphire Tailors after a brief try-on just to make sure everything was OK.

Elliot's two identical suits (for his 6th form school uniform) cost SR425 each (£57), and my considerably larger suit was slightly more at SR500 (£67).

Elliot looking smart and pleased with himself

We put them on when we got home to show Karen & Abigail, then went out to the garden for some photos. This was supposed to be a mock mail-order catalogue shoot with us in various fake poses for a laugh, but the chairs were so dusty we couldn't sit down, and we were no good at doing the fake posing anyway.

...and these are the better shots. Imagine the ones I'm not showing you.

"Your name's not down, you're not coming in."

Still, you get to see what the suits are like. We're very pleased with them..

Riyadh(& Bahrain)Cam

2007-08-16T18:56:00.000+03:00

A collection of interesting and amusing pics taken with my mobile phone while out and about...

Prayer time in Riyadh. Some go to the mosque, but others just pray for the shops to re-open.

Not sure what a 'Prodcast' is, but this phone can do it.

This sign on the Bahrain causeway is just over the border and says, 'The fun starts here.' We were so desperate for the fun we sped past so the photo is a bit of a blur.

The souk in Bahrain, and a rival for Sapphire Tailors: Suitings Corner.

'Super Mario Trading'. I wish I'd gone in and asked if they had any drainpipe trousers.

Many more Movenpick brunches and I'll be in the market for one of these.

Hmm, been feeling a bit weedy lately. Maybe some of this Ginseng drink will give me the Charles Atlas body I've always wanted.

'Lost in Translation' classic. Click to enlarge, but the slogan is:
"Super top king hip hop game, best come on boys star, get your own crypt and live forever King Boys".
Brilliant.

Suit Fitting

2007-08-15T14:20:00.000+03:00

No sooner had we got home from Bahrain than it was time for Elliot and me to return to Sapphire Tailor's in Batha to have a trial fitting of our new suits, and this time I took RiyadhCam along.

Finding the shop again was a breeze thanks to my having saved the location in my SatNav system, and we arrived precisely at the appointed time. Elliot was clearly looking forward to the fitting: two tailor-made suits at age 16... why wouldn't he be pleased? I was feeling a little more apathetic I have to say. At this price I'm not expecting Saville Row quality, so although I'm expecting the thing to fit I have an open mind about the quality of the finished article and how long it will last.

We go in to be met by... I'm ashamed to say even though I asked him his name twice I can't remember it. I know it was similar to Abdulrahman but wasn't. Anyway, our Indian tailor met us and escorted us up the stairs in the middle of the shop to the single fitting room.

I went first and changed into my new trousers, which fitted perfectly although they were clearly not finished cosmetically. I then tried on the jacket, which was part-made: no lining yet, no collar, no buttons or other stitching. Again it was a pretty good fit and the tailor marked where the two halves should meet at the front when buttoned with a series of chalk lines.

Next it was Elliot's turn. His trousers were a bit tight around the waist, and also looked a little short.

We agreed that once the waist was the right fit they would 'sit' better and the length would probably sort itself out. His jacket was a little short in the sleeve and a bit tight around the body: made him look even slimmer than he really is. The tailor made the necessary notes and adjustments, and we were in and out in only around 15 minutes.

We go back on Saturday to collect our finished suits, and if we like them enough we'll pose for RiyadhCam so you can see for yourselves how sartorially elegant we look. If not, well... I'd rather not think about that at the moment.

Full Up

2007-08-13T09:59:00.001+03:00

I'm feeling full up. In fact I don't think I'll ever eat again. Well, that's perhaps a BIT of an exaggeration, but it'll be at least two hours before I ever eat again anyway.

Novotel Al Dana Resort

Our trip to Bahrain was extended at the last minute, because the Embassy wanted Karen to collect something from the Embassy in Bahrain and bring it back, so we had to stay until it re-opened on Sunday morning. Such hardship! Another 24 hours of shopping, cinema, lounging by the pool and eating out. Oh well, I suppose someone's got to do it.

I did feel a little self-conscious as the family relaxed by the pool, and this time it wasn't for exposing parts of my body to public view that have grown a little more than I'd have like them to. All four of us were reading one of the Harry Potter books: Abigail's was Order Of The Phoenix (because of the movie), mine was Half Blood Prince (which I started immediately after watching the OOTP movie), and Karen and Elliot were both stuck into The Deathly Hallows. We must've looked like a right bunch of saddo's with our four HP books lying on our sun loungers all in a row. Still, don't care! The HP marathon is nearly at an end. The last book has been published and there are only two film adaptations to go. We saw the new movie, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" while here. I was the only one who hasn't read that particular book, so while the other three mumbled, 'not as good as the book' and, 'they missed loads out', I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

We debated long and hard about which film we should choose for our second cinema visit of the trip. From a shortlist of Die Hard 4, Shrek 3, Spiderman 3, Fantastic Four 2, and The Simpsons we elected to see The Simpsons Movie, and only ten minutes in I knew we had made the right choice. If you like The Simpsons you'll love the movie, and if you don't I guess you won't. I loved it. Hilarious. I laughed out loud every few minutes.

Culinary highlight of the trip was Friday Brunch at the Movenpick hotel. If you ever visit Bahrain on a Friday, you must go to the Movenpick for brunch. It is out of this world. We arrived at 12.30 and were seated in the hotel's airy atrium, with high vaulted ceiling and an entire wall of windows letting in streams of sunlight.

After an introductory glass of sparkling wine you wander up to the countless buffet tables for food.

On your marks, get set... go!

I started with freshly-made Sushi, which was among the best I've had. Following that I had Malaysian Laksa soup: a hot, spicy soup not unlike Thailand's Tom Yam Goong. Next I had a small plate of Malaysian Beef Redong curry, with my sparkling wine being automatically topped up all the while. Then it was time to visit the fresh counter. I joined a line of people with my plate and shuffled past two tables groaning with fresh seafood and meat. There were whole crabs, lobster tails, huge shrimp, plus raw beef, chicken, and more. Here you're supp0sed to select the fresh fish or meat you like and put it on your plate. Then as you walk along the line you can see the chefs in the kitchen, cooking the food of those ahead of you. When you get to the end of the line you tell the waitress how you want it cooked: grilled, pan-fried, wok-fried, Thai Curry, etc. Give them your name and table number and go and sit down, then they bring you the finished dish a few minutes later.

Elliot and Abigail having a whale of a time

Another top up of wine and Karen persuades me to try the oysters. I go and get six (they're supposed to be in half-dozens aren't they?). I eat two and Karen has one, but we can't finish them (it is a bit late in the day for this). Another glass of bubbly and it's time for dessert. I start off with chocolate ice cream, followed by a banana and chocolate crepe, made in front of me by the chef. At the same time Abigail visits the chocolate fountain and returns with two skewers of chocolate-covered strawberries, pineapple, and marshmallows.

All the while there is live piano music, face painting, henna tattoos, and a clown making balloon animals for the kids. Abigail then decides to finish off dessert with a candy floss!

"You're mine, all mine!"

After three and a half hours of this we manage to prise ourselves out of the chairs and waddle out to our waiting taxi. Heavenly.

That was just one of several culinary delights, but I think you've had quite enough for the time being. Now do you believe me when I say I'm Full Up?

Bahrain Here We Come

2007-08-08T11:02:00.000+03:00

My infection/plague/virus/whatever has finally started to abate, thanks to some good old Penicillin, which you can buy over the counter here without prescription. In the last three days I have been taking a mixture of Panadol, Ibuprofen, LemSip, Strepsils, soluble Codeine and now antibiotics too. It's been horrible and I've not been able to sleep much, but at least now I seem to be over the worst and am feeling a lot better today.

Good job too, because this afternoon I'm driving the family the four hours to Bahrain for a long weekend. Regular readers will know that Bahrain is the perfect weekend getaway for people in Saudi. If you're new to the blog just search it for "Bahrain" and you'll see what I mean.

This will be our last Bahrain trip as a family, as the children move to the UK next month to start their new school. Top of the priority list is to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in the cinema. Unlike the rest of the family I haven't yet read past the first four books in the series, so I don't know the story. My plan is to watch this one, thus skipping the book, then read "...Half Blood Prince" before moving on to the new one, "...Deathly Hallows". Nobody has yet finished the new book in our house as we got our copies a bit late, but hopefully one of our two copies will be available to me once I'm ready for it.

More about the trip when we get back, then right after that it'll be time for Elliot and me to have trial fittings of our new suits. Can't wait!

Sick

2007-08-07T16:44:00.000+03:00

Uurrrggghhh...

Not been very well the last couple of days. I've had both tonsillitis and sinusitis in the past, but what I have at the moment feels like both together. Blocked and dry sinuses make me want to swallow, but when I do it's really painful.

It's getting better slowly. The flu-like fever I had at the beginning has gone now and I'm glad about that, but the foreign body that seems to have taken up residence in the middle of my head is still irritating the hell out of me, so I'm not really in the mood to blog, or anything else for that matter.

I even ducked out of a poker game last night -- unheard of.

I'm thinking of getting one of those steel poles on wheels that let hospital patients go for walk down the corridor without being disconnected from their saline drip, only mine would be providing intravenous LemSip.

Following Suit

2007-08-04T08:48:00.000+03:00

Ah, lifetime ambitions! What are yours? Some of mine are grander than others. For example, someday I would like to drive a tank, experience space travel, write a bestselling novel. Nothing impossible but each would require a considerable amount of dedicated effort to realise (especially the driving a tank one. Pretty easy in England, but damn near impossible in Saudi Arabia, unless it's your job).

http://www.experiencemad.co.uk/Tank-Driving/

And then some lifetime ambitions are a little more down-to-earth. Like buying a tailor-made suit for example.

I had no intention of ordering myself a suit as we set out on Thursday morning. We were going in search of an economical (I dislike the word 'cheap') tailor to make a couple of black suits for Elliot, to serve as his uniform at the new school. The lower years have a strict uniform requirement but the 6th form boys need only wear a dark suit, white shirt and school tie, so we figured it would make sense to get a couple of inexpensive suits made up while we're in Riyadh, and asked a couple of friends if they knew any good tailors.

There are two distinct choices here: one is to use a tailor in one of the western compounds. Most compounds have a small number of shops, and several of these include a tailor. You'd be able to transact your business in air-conditioned comfort and relative quiet, but you'd also have to phone ahead and make an appointment so that you have a legitimate reason for the security guards to let you onto the compound in the first place. You can't just turn up at places like this. We had tried and failed at this earlier in the week. I took Elliot to get his hair cut at a compound hair salon, choosing it because I remembered there being a tailors there too. But when we arrived we found the tailor had closed down and moved elsewhere weeks previously. The second choice you have is to go to Bat'aa, sometimes written Batha or Al Batha, but in any case pronounced Battar. Bat'aa is an area in the south of the city renowned for its souks (markets), and there are distinct ethnic areas: Indian market, Philipino market, etc. This area is always busy, but at night the word 'busy' just doesn't cut it (so I'm told). Here you can just roll up, there will (should) be loads of tailors to choose from, and they'll be cheaper than the more official compound variety.

We set off then on Thursday morning, which is traditionally a quiet time for shopping. With vague directions given to us by a friend: "Raymond Showroom, in Indian Market, close to Al Batha Hotel". We had no idea where the Indian Market was, nor the hotel. In fact this was only our second venture into Bat'aa since we've been here. Luckily my SatNav unit knew of "Al Batha Hotel" so we found that and parked up. We decided I would go for a little reccy on my own to try and find Raymond Showroom, since the environment didn't look very inviting. The place was teeming with cars, taxis, buses, and people, there were hardly any women around and no other westerners at all. In fact the entire human throng around us seemed to consist of Indian and Pakistani men. After about ten fruitless minutes of searching I returned to the family in the car, very sweaty (me, not the family in the car), and suggested moving to another souk across the dual carriageway. The side we were on seemed to specialise in mobile phone repair shops, but I had been able to spy some clothes shops across the river of traffic. On reaching the other side we found it to be quieter, and drove up and down a couple of side streets until we found a shop with the word "Tailor" in the window.

Both sides of their business card

The place we'd found was called Sapphire Tailor, and on the sign beneath the name was a string of brand names like Van Heusen, and Raymond. RAYMOND! Perhaps we had, by pure fluke, stumbled across "Raymond Showroom"? We went in. They had the kind of air-conditioning that didn't work very well, but it was better than nothing. There were two Indian men working there: the tailor and the assistant tailor going by their behaviour. The place looked the part too: the floor was piled high with shirts in boxes, the kind of boxes that gave nothing away about their contents, no pictures, not cut-away windows. You had to open each box to see what the shirt inside was like. There was the tailor behind a wide counter covered in green baize, with a brass ruler along one side, and another even longer counter in front of a wall of rolls of cloth. We told the assistant what we wanted (the tailor was busy with another customer) and he began deftly plucking rolls of black cloth from behind him and plonking them on the counter in front of us, giving each a little twist as they span through the air, with the effect that they landed with the first half metre or so unrolled for our inspection. He looked Elliot up and down and declared that we would need three metres of material for each suit. We said we wanted two suits both the same, so that he wouldn't have to worry which jacket and which trousers, and I negotiated a price of SR850, or just over £110.

It was at that point, and honestly not until that point, that I suddenly decided that I would have a tailor-made suit too. It was one of those things on my things-to-do-before-you-die list. Not a burning ambition as such, but something I'd always promised myself. And here we were standing in front of an enthusiastic assistant tailor whose prices I liked. I chose a lightweight, dark grey cloth and he started giving me the same appraisal he'd just given Elliot. Karen whispered in my ear, "What do you reckon? five metres? six?" Bloody cheek. I beamed as the assistant declared my suit would need three and a quarter metres. Much less than I'd feared, but then we all knew where the extra quarter of a metre would be employed, and it wouldn't be the length.

Final price was SR1350 (£180) for three tailor-made suits. We both got the full measurement treatment from the tailor (I suspect a faulty tape measure: he said my waist was 39 1/2 inches. That can't be right!), and specified what we wanted: lapel width, number and type of trouser pockets, single vs double vent etc. We go back next week for a trial fitting, and this time I'll try to remember to take some photos.

Hot: 2

2007-08-02T22:13:00.000+03:00

Two things have dominated today.

First, I went back to the dentist to get a permanent crown cemented (replaing a temporary crown) and to have a couple of old fillings replaced with new tech stuff. When the dentist drilled out the old filling he discovered a crack in my molar that required yet another crown, so I ended up in the chair for 3 1/2 hours. Sore!

Second, it was 50 degrees again today, and Karen had the presence of mind to take a photo of the car thermometer readout:

...just in case you didn't believe me yesterday.

Hot

2007-08-01T10:33:00.000+03:00

The thermometer in my car read 50 degrees centigrade again yesterday. During the day the temperature here fluctuates between 46 and 50, but of course it never "officially" reaches the 50 mark, because that's the limit at which manual labourers working outdoors are allowed to down tools, so (I'm told) it never goes above 49 as far as foremen are concerned. The overnight low is around 38.

Yesterday I walked with Abigail from the house to the embassy compound to return some DVDs. It's a five-minute walk and believe me, you wouldn't want to do anything longer than that in these conditions. You know how the inside of your car feels when you return to it after a day parked under the hot sun? That's how it feels here, outdoors. As we walked I felt my T-shirt, my jeans, and I couldn't keep my hand on them.

During the winter the embassy heats the water in the pool, but in summer it's heated by the Sun. I think this year's worse than last. We went to the pool the other day and the water was very warm, like a Jacuzzi. The water in the pipes to the house is heated underground too. When I take a shower I have to have the tap on the 'cold' setting, and the water is hot. If I had it at the normal 'half-and-half' setting it would be scalding.

So, we spend most of our time in air-conditioning: the house, the car, the shopping mall. But then the dry air plays havoc with my sinuses. Can't win can I?

Some of my UK friends have been moaning about the wet and miserable summer they're having. Wanna swap?

Got a headache!

2007-07-31T14:35:00.000+03:00

Is it me or are the circles moving?
click to enlarge -- bigger is better!

Failed my Saudi Driving Test

2007-07-30T10:54:00.000+03:00

I'll never qualify as a Saudi driver until I can drive while holding my cup of coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, while talking on my mobile and holding the steering wheel between my knees. Heck, seems I can't even manage the coffee part.

I was driving back home from Starbucks yesterday with the children, and went to retrieve my Latte from the cupholder in the centre armrest by grabbing it around the top like one of those fairground cranes. A manouevre I've done many times before but this time the plastic lid came off and a frantic twenty seconds ensued, during which I was trying to steer with my left hand, holding the cup up in front of me with my right, yelping, braking, looking in my mirror, scalding my groin, splashing coffee all over the steering wheel and instrument panel, and my groin again, and trying to stop without colliding with anything.

Elliot and Abigail thought it was quite funny but I can assure you my groin was not amused, and now the whole car smells of coffee.

Malaysia (again): Langkawi

2007-07-28T10:54:00.000+03:00

Right, I have two objectives this hot and sunny Saturday morning: to finish off our Malaysia holiday by showing you some snaps of Langkawi, and to get that hideous dog off the top of the page (it's amazing what surprises an internet search can dig up).

I know this has taken a while and other stories have gotten in the way but I thought splitting the Malaysia stuff up a bit would make a nice change from last August when you got nothing but Thailand Thailand Thailand from me for about a month.

So, our second Malaysian location was the islands of Langkawi, off the west coast of the mainland and a one hour flight Northwest of KL. The Pelangi Beach resort is one of those hotels where the rooms are built as a "village" of small houses along the beach, with lush, landscaped tropical gardens and lots of palm trees. Each house contained four or eight rooms, depending on its size.

It's hard not to have a great time in a place like this, and I won't bore you with all the luxury of it. Suffice it to say we loved it and returned to Riyadh refreshed, chilled, and thoroughly rested.

And now some piccies...

Our "front garden"

The smaller of the resort's two pools

...which we had almost to ourselves for a week -- wonderful!

How nice! A little flag to wave whenever you fancy a drink or a bite to eat poolside.

Trip to Bird Paradise on the other side of the island

...which apparently also incorporates Rabbit Paradise.

There's a 30-minute steep uphill trek over rough terrain to get to this waterfall. Minutes after I took this, Abigail slipped on the rock and went in the water up to her chest!

Abigail in her element.

No, not another free cocktail! Oh well, if I must...

Pick a card...

Overall a fantastic holiday which I would recommend to anyone. Great as it was though, my heart still belongs to Thailand.

Freaky-Eyed Hell Dog From Hell

2007-07-26T09:25:00.000+03:00

"It's hideous!" (shiver)
Ugly and disturbing yet hard to look away -- like a car crash.

Martin found it already (see comment in previous post). How many others of you couldn't wait and seized the initiative by copying my search?

Freaky picture of the year so far

2007-07-26T01:20:00.000+03:00

Do you want to see a really freaky picture?

While writing the previous post I did a Google Image Search on the word "Mobily" to find a copy of their logo, and on the first page of hits I found (the logo and) a REALLY SERIOUSLY freaky picture. It's so freaky I'm scared to go to bed because I will have nightmares about it.

I will post this picture here tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Madvertising

2007-07-25T16:32:00.001+03:00

There are only two mobile phone networks in Saudi Arabia: Al Jawal is "the Daddy", in that it is owned by Saudi Telecom and is by far the larger of the two, and then there's Mobily, which started off at about the same time we arrived here less than two years ago. Mobily is the new young hopeful, and probably the faster growing of the two.

Mobily tries to project a young, modern image, and goes to great lengths to attract young Saudis in its advertising, come up with attractive price plans and so on. I must have been wooed by their marketing because I chose Mobily for the childrens' phones, and therefore I get two bills from them every couple of months (the price plans here are for two months rather than monthly -- I've never understood why). The problem with these bills is that they are in Arabic, so I can't read them. I've asked Mobily to send my bills in English several times, and if you look up my customer record in their database it says "Requested Bill Language = English" on the screen, but when the bills arrive they're still in Arabic. Oh well, I can always go into one of their stores to pay, and the helpful staff will tell me how much I owe.

One thing that amuses me about these bills is the little advert they always stick in the envelope. Every time there's an A4 sheet advertising something or other -- I can't tell what -- but the pictures are often quite funny. Take a look at the latest one for example:

click to enlarge

Ad Exec #1: What image can we come up with to tell our customers that the whole Mobily team is here to support them, and that they'll always have our power behind them?
Ad Exec #2: Erm.... I know! Let's use a Formula 1 theme!
#1: Formula 1.. what's that?
#2: They have it in Bahrain and now Abu Dhabi too. It's a car race. We can have a picture of a pit crew.
#1: A what?
#2: A pit crew. It's a gang of technicians whose job is to refresh the car's fuel and tyres as quickly as possible. Some of them can do it in under seven seconds!
#1: I'm not quite following you. What does that have to do with mobile communications?
#2: Well, nothing directly, but it's a glamorous, fast-paced world that our young customers will want to be associated with.
#1: Maybe, but I'm not sure they'll get the message from a picture of a racing car.
#2: No no, you don't understand. That's just it! We'll brush out the car and replace it with a man in a thobe sitting in an office chair surfing the net on his laptop.
#1: What's that guy with the big hose doing? It looks like he's about to spray petrol over the guy's foot!
#2: Umm, well... er... that hose... could symbolise the information superhighway!
#1: Brilliant! Let's do it!

It wouldn't surprise me to see the job of Advertising Manager for Mobily in the Situations Vacant section of tomorrow's Arab News.

Harry Potter and the Red-faced Dad

2007-07-24T14:10:00.000+03:00

We're all Harry Potter fans in our house. Well, Karen and the children like it more than I do. I used to be into it all when we first discovered him, and when the film series started, but now I feel a bit jaded by the HP "machine", and am looking forward to the new movie and the new book with growing indiference.

However, I'm also a Dad and a bit of problem solver, so while I'm not going to lose any sleep over how long I have to wait for my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I still want to do the right thing by the rest of the family and ensure we get hold of it as soon after the launch as we can. But how soon? Remember we're in Saudi Arabia, the strictest Islamic country in the world, so we're not likely to see it on the bookshelves here anytime soon. In fact there is only one retail chain in Riyadh that sells English books (Jarir Bookstore), and their selection isn't usually that great.

So, Superdad to the rescue! I know, I'll pre-order a copy on Amazon.co.uk. We only get one postal delivery a week from the UK so it will take at least a week after launch before we get our hands on it, but that's the best we can do here isn't it? Wait, I can go one better. Let's order TWO copies, then we can all get it read that much quicker.

Early last week I received an email from Amazon.co.uk telling me that they were "preparing your order for dispatch". How exciting! On Saturday morning (Launch Day) I told Elliot and Abigail that our two copies would soon be on their way, and felt quite good about myself for about three hours, until Abigail's friend Ellie arrived in the afternoon for a sleepover. She walked in with a large book under her arm.
"What's that you've got there Ellie?" I ask
"Oh, it's the new Harry Potter." she says casually. "I got it from Jarir this morning."

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Dentist

2007-07-21T11:56:00.000+03:00

I never used to like going to the dentist. Probably a symptom of my childhood dental treatment, of which there was a lot and it was nowhere near as sophisticated (or painless!) as it is today. I even remember being put to sleep with a gas mask over my face before having teeth extracted. So even though I know today's dentistry is little more than mildly uncomfortable, I still dread the approaching appointment as if I were ten years old again.

Our local dental surgery is the Gama Dental Clinic. Well, I say local... it's a twenty minute drive away and we go past at least three others to get to it, but it's the one the Embassy recommended to us. It's a large surgery with at least ten treatment rooms. All the dentists are either South African or Indian and all the assistants, receptionists and hygienists are from the Philippines.

Gama Dental Clinic on Old Airport Rd.

I'm in the middle of some treatment at the moment to have a couple of crowns and to replace some old metal fillings that are starting to expand and crack my teeth. (that just brought back a memory of swilling clear pink mouthwash and spitting bits of metal into a steel bowl, while you struggle to detach the last stringy drip of mouthwash from your numbed lip and end up having to wipe it off with a tissue. They don't have those bowls, or the mouthwash, any more do they? I haven't seen them for years). In fact the treatment I get here is the least painful I've ever had. It could be the same in UK now, but here they have a pink anaesthetic gel that they rub on your gums which numbs them from feeling even the main anaesthetic injection. Does your dentist have that? I'd never seen it before coming to Riyadh.

I went last week to have a crown done, and I go back tomorrow to have the temporary crown removed and the new permanent one fitted. This will be a shorter visit than they think, because the temporary crown fell out this morning as I was driving along the Northern Ring Road at 140km/h (think I'll leave the chewing gum alone for a few weeks til it's all over).

While I'm in "Dentist Mode" I decided to take Abigail for a check-up, partly because she's got an adult canine coming through and the loose baby tooth below it is refusing to give way, and partly because -- with Karen and Elliot working at the Embassy and Abigail off school -- we've got nothing else to do. The dentist offered to remove the loose tooth but Abigail politely declined, preferring to wait a week or so for nature to take its course. But, our dentist also spotted some decay and promptly gave Abigail her first and second fillings. We weren't expecting that, as she has very good teeth, but this was a sobering reminder to her to keep them clean and cut back on the sugar. I sat with her during the treatment, so of course got bored and started snapping photos with my phone.

Waiting for the anaesthetic to kick in

This was the first time Abigail had felt that numb feeling in her mouth and she quite enjoyed the experience, until it started wearing off of course.

"Open wide..."

Blogging about the dentist is quite therapeutic. I don't feel worried about tomorrow anymore.

Globalisation, Localised

2007-07-19T11:34:00.000+03:00

Took all three of these photos in a single shopping trip. Shopping here is a curious mix of the familiar and the downright strange. At least that's how it felt at first. We're used to the strange bits now but still sometimes have to do a double-take to make sure we just saw what we think we just saw.

The checkout at Marks & Spencers. I'm sure the westerners in the posters are the same in every M&S branch internationally, only here they've got those pointless pixel-masks over their eyes.

"I'll have a grande low-fat triple Latte and a teddy bear please."

"Ninja Barbie" at Debenhams. Even the dolls are prohibited from exposing their flesh in public. I wonder if they're only allowed to play with male dolls from the same factory?

Kuala Lumpur: Night Market

2007-07-17T11:27:00.000+03:00

Still covering our Malaysia holiday in dribs and drabs. You can tell my brain's in a bit of a mixed up state at the moment can't you?

Readers of the recently retired Bloody Marvellous! will know that I've had my eye on a particular watch: the Omega Seamaster GMT. Trouble is it's a bit pricey so while I'm saving up I thought I'd try to find an imitation one in one of KL's most famous night markets.

Jalan Petaling's night market

The night market on Jalan Petaling in Chinatown is renowned for having cheap copies of just about any designer accessory you'd care to mention. It's a huge, bustling, noisy, cramped labyrinth of stalls, a real pickpocket's paradise, and there's me with my Nikon digital SLR slung nonchalantly over my shoulder! And talk about the Hard Sell; at least twice a frustrated stall owner physically held on to one of us when we started to walk away without buying anything and Karen had to use her Foreign Office Voice to effect a speedy release.

The KL branch of CrapWatches "R" US

Just about every watch stall (and we visited a few!) had a "Nomega" GMT, and all were asking around 280 Ringgit, which is about £40 Sterling. Not too bad when you consider the original costs around £1500, but still this was "before discount" and just like in Life of Brian you're expected to haggle. I started at 100 Ringgit and gradually upped my offer to 140, whereupon the "salesman" gave me a sob story about his cost price and how he wasn't going to make any money. We finally agreed on 150 Ringgit, or just over 20 quid, and I thought I'd got a pretty good deal considering he would also adjust the bracelet into the bargain.

The Real Thing

My new watch stopped working two weeks later. I've tried shaking it (that's how you're supposed to charge it up) and it'll go again for a while but then stop when you most need it not too, which is all the time. I've done a little TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) calculation and my £20 watch that lasted two weeks has cost me £10 per week of use. Now, the real Omega that costs £1500 should conservatively be expected to work properly for five years at the very least, so even with a pessimistic view the cost per week of use would be around £5 -- half as expensive as the cheap copy.

The Fake Thing

There. That's the cost justification argument wrapped up. Now all I need to do is to secure budget approval from my Financial Director.

Karen? When can we have a brief planning meeting?

RiyadhCam: Global Marketing

2007-07-17T11:05:00.000+03:00

The film tie-in marketing campaigns regularly employed by global brands like McDonalds and Chevrolet don't quite work in a country with no cinemas, but do they tailor their marketing strategy to suit the local culture? Of course not, that would reduce profits!

Want a Shrek the Third Happy Meal? No problem.
Want to see Shrek the Third? Problem!

I wonder how many Saudis recognise this giant yellow robot from the new Transformers movie.

Old Croc

2007-07-15T09:34:00.000+03:00

My Crocs are the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn. The trouble is they look a bit dorkish. Very dorkish truth be told. A plastic, oversized clog that looks designed for Lego Men. Still, it's a beach shoe. You can wear them in the sea and not cut your feet on small stones and broken shells, so that's good.

Mine aren't pink! They're a butch Army Green.

Originally I regarded them as a slipper replacement. What could be better? All comfy and cosy at home in my crocs with no-one to see me except my family, who gave up on my appearance years ago. But then I started wearing them to go to the Embassy DVD library, to nip up the shop for a loaf of bread. Later I began wearing them to go to the supermarket. They're easy to put on see? You don't have to bend down or lace them up, you can just step into them on your way out the door.

Then the worst thing happened. As you probably know it gets pretty hot here in Riyadh: 45 - 50 degress is normal in the Summer. It will probably also come as no surprise to learn that bare feet in plastic shoes in 50 degree heat tend to get sweaty. Very sweaty. I've almost fallen over a couple of times, slipping in my own plastic squelchiness. It was then that I had the idea of.... socks.

What a perfect solution! A thin, soft barrier between my skin and the plastic wall of the shoe. Sweat: Be Gone! Socks also make Crocs even more comfortable, something I thought impossible. Of course this combination does have a disadvantage which I'm sure you don't need me to spell out. It's a look only professional standers can get away with: nurses, dental assistants.

But what am I showing the world with this forsaking of image and style to worship the God of Comfort? An enlightened being at a level of maturity who transcends the phoney, shallow fads of modern living to find spiritual calm, or a grumpy middle-aged man on a slippery slope to senility and sennapods?

I sort of care which, but not enough to take my socks off.

Malaysia Celebrates

2007-07-12T17:30:00.000+03:00

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Malaysia's independence from British Rule, and everywhere we went in KL we saw this logo:

Considering this occasion we decided to follow one of the recommended walks in our Lonely Planet guidebook, which took us around some of KL's older, more colonial buildings. The walk began in Merdeka (Independence) Square: a large, open grassy area flanked by colonial buildings that at one time formed the centre of Malaya's Government.

KL's architecture, old and new

The family in Merdeka Square's gardens

At the North end of the square is a 100m-high flagpole that was erected to fly the newly independent country's flag. They claim this is the world's tallest flagpole but, just as with buildings, opinion on the internet is divided about this too.

World's tallest or not, it's flippin' tall!

Those who haven't seen Elliot for a while may be surprised at how much he's grown.

The following day we visited Lake Titiwangsa, a picturesque park just north of the city centre. To celebrate the anniversary they had "Eye on Malaysia": a London Eye- like ferris wheel of air-conditioned capsules that you could ride to get a good view of the city's skyline.

"Eye On Malaysia"

I would guess this one is about one third the size of the London eye, but then this is only a temporary installation for 2007, to celebrate the anniversary. The capsules were smaler but (thankfully) air-conditioned, and where the London Eye gives you only one (slow) rotation for your fare, the Malaysia Eye took us round about six times for only 15 Ringgit (£2) each.

The lake is also popular with courting couples

Nice afternoon for a bike ride

We'd got a taxi to the lake but there were none to be had back to the city, and in KL taxis are not allowed to stop for you anywhere but on official taxi ranks, a fact I discovered only after several minutes of failing to flag one down. In the end we had to walk to the nearest monorail station -- a twenty minute walk in intense heat and humidity running out of bottled water and sweat running down everywhere. Boy, were we glad to finally board the air-conditioned train!

They're small but regular!

Kuala Lumpur: Petronas Towers

2007-07-10T13:37:00.000+03:00

This trip was always going to have big shoes to fill, as it would inevitably be compared with last year's Thailand holiday. Let's see how Malaysia fared in the competition...

I was going to do one big posting about KL, but what with work, social activities and jet lag I'm feeling a bit under the weather at the moment and have not been able to muster the energy. Instead let's break it up into smaller chunks so that you've got SOMETHING to read at least :-)

What's the first thing that comes into your head when you think of KL? I bet (assuming you've heard of KL before and seen pictures) that you just thought of the Petronas Towers didn't you?. These majestic spires are KL's most famous feature by far and they dominate pretty much every view of the city's skyline with their 452 metres. I'm not going to venture a ranking in the league of World's tallest buildings (there are too many opinions as to what does and doesn't qualify and how the measurement should be taken), but the Towers hold a healthy position in every top ten I've seen, so let's just say it's one of the World's tallest buildings and leave it at that.

The Petronas Towers as viewed from the Cocktail Bar in our hotel

So, while the Towers are a claim to fame for KL and undoubtedly bring in lots of welcome tourism revenue, they also kind of upstage anything else KL may have to offer and the city ends up only being famous for one thing, a bit like William Roach (Who? - Ed. Exactly! Perhaps if I said Ken Barlow instead you'd get my point.)

Even more impressive by night!

So, with the Petronas Towers dealt with we can look in the next couple of posts at some other cool things about KL.

Back to the Daily Grind

2007-07-09T12:38:00.001+03:00

We got back to Riyadh yesterday evening after a lovely holiday in Malaysia.

Before going on I feel I must apologise for that moaning last post; I was a bit tiddly and the heat had gotten to me a bit.

Despite the sticky heat the holiday was great and after both this and our Thailand trip last year I can recommend the two-centre approach. The combination of life in the capital city and a resort island gives you a nice contrasting view of the country. We did lots of fun things and got loads of great photos. I'll post some stories about the trip here in a day or two, after I've caught up with work emails and pared down my 300 photos to a more manageable number.

"Wisdom Lover" commented in my post about Last Day at School that he thought this trip would be twice as good as Thailand. Sorry to disagree with you Wisdom... whilst I found this year's holiday more relaxing I would still choose Thailand if I ever planned a return visit.

hot

2007-07-05T16:38:00.000+03:00

I'm really, really hot. We went to a place called the Lighthouse for dinner, sat on a sandy beach eating seafood curries. That would've been bad enough but I then decided to finish the evening with drinks in the hotel's main (non-air conditioned) bar, so here I sit half asleep, half-cut, drinking Harvey Wallbangers and writing this drivel. Why am I even bothering? Even typing makes me sweat.

Postcard from Malaysia

2007-07-03T17:12:00.000+03:00

About halfway through our holiday in Malaysia so I thought I'd better drop you a quick line to let you know how we're getting on.

Had a great three days in Kuala Lumpur, staying at the excellent Traders Hotel, just opposite the famous Petronas Towers. Service, Rooms and food were all superb. Highlight of this leg of the trip was the night market on Jalan Petaling, where we bought six watches, including a "Rolex" and an "Omega", and designer purse, bag, belt and sunglassed, all for a grand total of about £50. It's the fake capital of the world!

As I write we're finishing our third day on Langkawi Island and have just finished a day's drive around the island.

Having too good a time to write more right now but will fill in the details when we get back.

Last Day at School

2007-06-27T13:07:00.000+03:00

Today is Abigail's last ever day at the British School. She and Elliot will be moving to a boarding school in the UK in September, and Elliot is working at the Embassy at the moment so had his last day at school already. How Karen and I feel about being separated from the children from September is stuff for another post nearer the time (I'm trying not to think about it).

We held a farewell party at the Embassy yesterday for them to say goodbye to around 35 of their friends. Elliot handled it better than Abigail did, her face was red with tears at the end. I expect it'll look the same when she gets back from school in around half an hour's time.

We're off on holiday this afternoon: ten days in Malaysia, can't wait! If it's even half as good as our Thailand holiday last year it'll be a trip to remember. Don't know if I'll post here while we're away. depends on how chilled out I get :-)

RiyadhCam: Cover-up

2007-06-26T13:33:00.000+03:00

Following my last post about conservatism gone mad, I found this poster in a mall this morning, in the window of an Abaya shop (Abayas are those black robes that women here have to cover themselves in). Not content with covering them in black apart from their eyes, once again the eyes are pixel-masked out.

Do they really think we'd be able to recognise these women by their eyes alone? And even if we could, what's the big deal?

Saudi Conservatism

2007-06-24T11:39:00.000+03:00

If you do any amount of research on the Saudi people and their customs you will quickly learn that they are a conservative society that values privacy and the sanctity of the family. Nothing wrong with that in itself, however the manifestations of this attitude appear strange to the foreign visitor, are inconsistently applied, and sometimes verge on the ridiculous.

It is well known that women in Saudi must be fully covered at all times when in public, and that restaurants and cafes -- even Starbucks and McDonalds -- have separate Family and Men Only sections with the Family Section usually consisting of private curtained booths. There is also a ban on any exposure of female flesh in the media, and it is a common sight in book and music shops to see magazine pages or CD album covers "censored" by having any bare female arms, legs, and midriffs scribbled over in black or red marker pen.

I thought I'd seen this taken to its ridiculous limit when I passed a clothes shop in a shopping mall recently. The shop window was decorated with large posters of small children -- toddlers -- modelling the outfits, but some over-zealous official had ordered their eyes to be digitally blurred behind a pattern of pixels, in the same way they do when interviewing witnesses in crime documentaries on TV. I didn't see the point but accepted it with a resigned shrug and moved on. The next children's clothes shop I passed bore no such signs of censorship, proving that it all depends on whether the guy with the rubber stamp is having a bad day or not I guess.

Well believe it or not I've topped even that:

Who could these mysterious characters be, hiding behind their pixel-masks??

Pigeon News

2007-06-24T09:01:00.000+03:00

The pigeon worriers among you will be delighted to know that our baby pigeon who fell from his nest into our atrium about a week ago has somehow made it back up there. He must have mustered the strength to fly up the four metres to the nest on an upstairs window ledge.

Mother and baby doing well

Sorry for the poor picture quality: taken with my mobile phone through the flyscreen on my bedroom window. Mum is easy to spot but baby, sitting in the nest, requires closer scrutiny (click to enlarge).

Dead Star Live!

2007-06-23T10:57:00.001+03:00

Finally managed to sort out my video gremlins, so here are a couple of excerpts from last week's Dead Star concert. These are taken from their final song, Sweet Child O' Mine.

Apologies for the poor sound and lighting, but then I'm sure we've all been to gigs like that haven't we? :-)

Click to Play

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Click to Play

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Dead Star's Last Hurrah

2007-06-23T07:18:00.000+03:00

Riyadh in June is very much a time of farewells and au revoirs among the expat community. With the end of the school year looming, families are jetting off to spend the summer with family and friends, or to take a holiday in a cooler climate, returning as the temperature in Saudi starts to return to a more tolerable level and the new school year begins.

For Elliot & Abigail the goodbyes are final, because they are leaving the British School to continue their education in the UK.

The other Year 11 members of Dead Star, the school's rock band, are also leaving the Kingdom for new schools, so last Wednesday the staff helped them to organise a farewell "gig" in the Sports Hall during the lunch break. Thanks to the time flexibility my job with Novell gives me I was able to go along and record their swan song for posterity. I shot video as well as stills but am currently having some technical challenges getting the video imported onto the computer. Will update the blog when/if I succeed.

Elliot on guitar and backing vocals during Stockholm Syndrome

Evan rocking out on vocals

The school's PA system struggled to bring out the individual instruments in some places and the lighting was disappointing but despite that the band played a tight, well-rehearsed set of famous rock covers:

Stockholm Syndrome by Muse
Nothing Else Matters by Metallica
Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin
Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes
Sweet Child O'Mine by Guns 'n' Roses

Elliot with the new guitar he got for working hard to finish his GCSEs

For Seven Nation Army the band swapped roles. Here you can see Elliot on vocals, JP on drums and Evan on rhythm guitar. Versatile!

JP doing the solo in Sweet Child O'Mine

Metal Axeman in the making.

An impressive line-up of songs that demonstrates their talent, dedication and hard work. Elliot is determined to be a Rock Star and, judging by this performance, I think he might just make it.

Dead Star: Luke (drums), JP (lead guitar), Elliot (rhythm guitar), Aldrin (bass), Evan (vocals)

UK 'in Afghanistan for decades'

2007-06-20T14:40:00.000+03:00

Our former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now HM Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper Coles, was interviewed recently by Radio 4's Today programme.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles in Afghanistan

Here's an extract from the BBC story:

The UK presence in Afghanistan will need to go on for decades to help rebuild the country, British ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has said.

"The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He added that the Afghan people wanted the UK presence to help resist the Taleban and develop the country.

Extra diplomatic staff are being deployed to Afghanistan this year.

"The message we are getting, the message I had only last week down in Helmand from the people of the villages there, was, 'Please protect us from the Taleban,'" said Sir Sherard.

You can read the full BBC News story by clicking here.

Mum To The Rescue!

2007-06-18T15:18:00.001+03:00

Our stranded baby pigeon has been spotted by his Mum, who must've returned to the now empty nest and figured out the rest. She visits several times a day to feed it, so I'm happy to watch and wait for him to spread his wings.

Click to Play

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Proud Dad

2007-06-18T12:04:00.001+03:00

I never won much (anything) at school, and neither did Karen, so we're wondering where Abigail gets it from.

At yesterday's annual prizegiving ceremony at the children's school Abigail was awarded Year 7 Student of the Year. I felt so proud as I watched her climb the steps to the stage to receive her award from the new British Ambassador, Mr. William Paty.

See for yourself!

Click to Play

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Guest in Distress

2007-06-16T12:53:00.000+03:00

We have a stranded baby pigeon in our atrium.

Elliot noticed it this morning. It looks like it's a few weeks old (guessing wildly here), has soft, downy brown feathers (the adult pigeons are brown here, unlike the grey ones we're used to in London) but it hasn't learned to fly yet. We looked up the atrium walls and for the first time noticed a nest on one of the window ledges. The bird had obviously gotten too near the edge and fell down.

On the floor of the atrium

See the nest on the window ledge?

I went upstairs to look at the nest more closely through the closed window and found another baby there about the same size, but as I watched that one flew up to the roof and away.

It doesn't seem hurt but I'm not sure what to do with it. Since it can't fly it'll die if it doesn't get any food. I don't want to pick it up and let it go out in the garden becuase the stray cats will undoubtedly kill it. Our maid Gina put some uncooked rice down for it but that hasn't been touched. I put out a small tray of water and scattered some of Dougie's rabbit food on the ground, which it has pecked at but not much. Next I tried a piece of bread, dry at one end and dipped in the water to soften it at the other, but he/she/it hasn't touched that.

Not eating

About an hour ago an adult pigeon flew down into the atrium and landed a few inches away. At least its Mum knows where it is. I wonder what she'll do: abandon it or bring it some food back?

Anyone got suggestions for what to feed it?