Shopping

This is retail heaven. There is a multistory mall every mile or so. The one above is the Red Sea Mall. It is so large you could actually get lost in it. I am not exaggerating. It is enormous. They are not set up anything like our malls and again, lack of signage is an issue. There are no mall directories, no you are here, basically no navigation. The reason the mall looks empty is that I went when all the stores were closed so I could take pictures easily. Store hours are 9-12ish, open again at 5 and stay open until around 1 AM. However, they do close twice during that evening time for prayers.

Malls tend to specialize. One of my favorite malls is almost exclusively jewelry stores and women's clothing. And when I say jewelry, I mean Tiffany's, Harry Winston, Cartier and the like. Tahlia must have 30 + jewelry stores in it. Great fun to window shop for things so far out of my price range it's impossible to describe. I am going with a friend to Qatr in February to go to a jewelry show which is supposed to be wholesale fine jewelry. I am already saving my rials. (There are 3.78 SR to an American dollar, add that to they use metric and it takes me a while to figure out what I'm paying.) I have started to think in terms of SR so that part has come easily. At first you have a mini heart attack with the high numbers but you get over it.

Most food is chaper here as long as you buy local food. American sweet potatoes are 28 SR a kg or roughly 3.50 a pound, very spendy. White potatoes that are local are less than a dollar a pound. Some of the brand names are familiar, I can still get Jif peanut butter. Other things you won't recognize a single brand. Kellogg's cereal is popular and many American cosmetics are available. The chickens are quite small, about the size of our Cornish game hens. There is lots of lamb, some beef and quite a variety of seafood. We find ourselves eating much healthier here.

However, the picture of the Burger King and the Coke ads up top proves that fast food is everywhere. Every fast food chain is here: McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, you name it, but we do not go to them. We go to local fast food which is Morrocan, Lebanese or similar.

We buy local for most items. The grocery stores would remind you of a super Target. They sell everything except clothing. The bakeries are to die for. They are enormous and the baked goods are unbelievable. I avoid them because I would spend my whole grocery budget there. The cookies are amazing.

Clothes shopping is almost all designer clothing. I am still trying to figure out why when everyone is covered up, but apparently when women socialize together at home, they dress for those occasions. I needed a long sleeved white shirt so I stopped by Liz Claiborne at lunch the other day and a shirt that I know sells for $29 back home I picked up for less than $10 here. These are not discounters, clothing is simply less expensive.

I will try and go to the mall when it is closed tomorrow to take some pictures of the gowns. Those are worth their very own post. All of them are made to order and you just go in and pick fabric.

Sunday Sight Seeing

Well actually that would be Friday. We went out and about last Friday to visit the beach and see a little of the city. Women swim in their abeyahs. Children up to about 10 or so all wear bathing suits and of course men do but women...no. There is an international beach where I could wear a swimsuit but I have had no time to go. The architecture is stunning and the area is truly pretty.

The pictures above are taken in the center of the city so you are seeing the harbor, one of the new hotels and a mosque that is right on the ocean. The hotel is very upscale, think flat screen TV in the bathroom. By the way, the traffic was moving at about 60 so those cars aren't parked and they do drive that close to each other.

Taking pictures is tricky as they prefer you do not take pictures of buildings and people...I kow, what else is left? At any rate, you have to be very careful when shooting photos.

The Office

The offices are beautiful. The pictures to the right are the foyer, they are all marble and every floor is similar except for color. The wall shot is one of the five core values. Each floor has a huge wall mural of one of the values. What you see is about 8 X 12 feet just outside my office. In the large picture above you see a computer screen on a pedestal. Everyone's screen saver is a countdown to the day KAUST opens. The picture with the numbers on it is a close up of the screen saver. Seriously, every clock has a countdown on it. No pressure just a constant reminder. The King was on site last week and I don't think disappointing him is one of the choices.

When you enter you do have to go through something similar to airport security, everything gets x-rayed and you must show ID even if they know you. The building is 5 stories, quite tall by local standards where little exceeds 3 stories except hotels on the Red Sea.

Addresses are another challenge. There are no markings on our building nor are there street numbers on any buildings. You have to give directions by referencing other buildings. Given that I don't speak the language except for hello, how are you, well, please, thank you, and the phrase "How do you say" and then I point, it does make life interesting. David had to come to the office one day and I'm trying to give him directions like, "go past the traffic circle where the bookstore is and when you pass a the big construction site look for a NAST gas station..turn right and there's the building. He got here, but it required intervention on a cell phone with the driver. I'll save communications issues for another whole post.

Anyway, the offices are spacious and we are grouped by departments so you are with your own work group but as I said earlier in another post, there is a great deal of walking around the building to get things accomplished. We have elevators but I walk up and down the stairs...I figure the exercise is good for me.

The House

We have a very comfortable home but it is quite different than what we are used to. All of the appliances have an on/off switch, washer, dryer, stove, etcetera. We are still trying to figure out why. Each room has its own air conditioner with its own remote to control the temperature individually. The units are built in and would remind you of a radiator in size. All of the appliances are water saving and smaller than what we are used to. A full load of clothes here is about 1/4 of a load back home. Linens and bedding are quite different. No top sheets, only duvets and the pillows are made of what I can only describe as something similar to duvet stuffing.

Anything goes wrong you call maintenance and someone comes very quickly. There are tons of maintenance people, all with specialties so you have the electrical guy, the plumbing guy, the cable guy and no one crosses over into any other job.

There are nice public areas in the compound. Each section has its own pool so you only share the pool with perhaps 8 houses. We have a restaurant, a dry cleaner, a library, a gym, a grocery store, all right here so you can just run out and do what you need to do.

First Day At Work

Bright and early the next morning, I'm out waiting for my ride to work at 6:40 as the work day starts at 7 AM. There is a very mixed group of nationalities at work, South Africans, Indians, Pakastanis, Lebanese, Australians, Saudis to name a few.

The work environment is quite different that I am used to. Everything is very relaxed; people come around several times a day to take orders for food or drink which is delivered to your desk. Almost all here is dependent upon face to face meetings and finding the right person to do what needs to be done. That can be interesting as people split time between here and the campus (50 miles away) and some live in the east so they leave to travel home at the half day.

I must wear local dress when out of the office but inside I wear what I am used to as long as it is mid-calf or pants and my arms are covered beyond the elbow. We have a driver who takes you out to lunch every day if you want to leave, so you travel to wherever the driver is going that day (you have a schedule) and they simply drop you off and you shop, eat , get your nails done, whatever you need to do and then return for the afternoon.

I am usually home by 4:15 in the afternoon. Since you shop and go out in the evenings it gives you time to come home and relax. You have to carefully time your evening excursions between prayer time as all shops close for prayer so you need to make sure you are before or after those times. Prayer time changes so you do need to pay close attention.

Our New Home

We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath flat overlooking the pool, as you see above right. It is quite spacious and comes with satellite television and all of the modern conveniences. All the floors are tile for the sake of the climate with the exception of the master bedroom. Cold water is a little hard to come by, tepid is about as good as it gets. We have a private shaded deck area which is lovely. Appliances are a challenge to figure out. It took quite a while to figure out how to use the dryer. The toaster only warms bread, it does not toast as we think of it.

The water had not yet been turned on when we arrived so we went to the pool which David was very thankful for, as you see on the above left. The water is warm but pleasant. It is truly too hot to go in during the day. We were so exhausted at this point, it just didn't matter. We fell into bed about 9 AM and slept until 3 pm and then got up to go shopping for some groceries. Almost everyone shops at night. If you go out at 11 PM the streets and stores are very crowded and traffic is quite busy. So Day 1, mostly sleep and shopping.

Getting there

Well, it was quite the adventure. We received and email on Wednesday morning around 10 AM that we MIGHT be on a flight that evening. Thar said, we scurried around doing all of the last minute things that could be done only at the last minute, canceling utilities, last minute change of address, last couple of things packed and stored...you get the picture.

Then it was just a waiting game. At this point there are no more cell phones, no more internet access so, although we had email we had no access, so we had to find somewhere we could get online to access and borrow phones. At 4 PM when no confirmations or details had arrived, we called Washington who stated they had my itinerary but not David's. I asked for the itinerary to be emailed and found out it was on their internal server and I could not access it. I called back DC again and ask for the name of the travel agent, get my information, and then try to go online to print boardingpass..at this point we realize the ticket name and the passport name do not match. They had put my middle and last names together as a single name. Call the travel agent again to explain the problem and that took a while but finally another whole ticket is done. (Do you hear the tick, tick , tick of the clock in the background? We had to be on the road to the airport by 6 to make the flight and it is now well past 5 and neither of us has a boarding pass.) This time the name is misspelled. Now keep in mind we don't have David's information at all while this is going on. Again, a call to DC, again an entire new ticket is issued, it is now 6:05. Again a call, to get David's itinerary, finally at 6:20 we get all the paperwork together and fly out the door to the airport.

At the airport, we find out we cannot get boarding passes for all flights and the layover is so long in London that we may not be able to check the luggage all the way through. Oh goodie, a hundred or so pounds of luggage to drag around Heathrow...needless to say we won't be leaving the airport too check out London on the layover. We get to the gate with 20 minutes until we started to board. When you drive 75 mph it helps.

Finally on the plane. Fabulous flight to London. The second airline does not issue boarding passes until 3 hours before flight time, so no VIP lounge until then. Not fun.

Eventually we get the boarding passes and get to go to the lounge. We had internet access for about 10 minutes before it died and Shoe was the only person whose email I could answer before it went kaput. Sorry about that, but no one including most family had any idea we were on our way at this point. The upside, showers and clean clothes.

We then boarded the second flight, the domestic airline for the destination. It was quite the experience. The movies on the plane were reviewed for content. I thought my eyes were blurry because I was so tired, but no, all kinds of things were simply blurred so they could not be viewed, wine bottles, v-neck sweaters, you name it. The captain came on about 45 minutes from our desitination to notify us we were approaching domestic airspace and that those who needed to do things before we crossed that border needed to proceed with them. Instant wardrobe changes then ensued for those who were not already appropriately attired.

When you deplane you do so out on the tarmac, no terminal, even thought this is a very large and busy airport. You then take a bus to immigration services. The back story is that on one of the rare moments we had internet access, David had emailed my boss to tell him the specifics of our flight. We assumed that the US offices had communicated with those in-country. The return email conveyed his utter surprise as to our arrival as he had no idea we were coming. Because it was the weekend, he did not know if we would have accomodations and hoped someone could meet us and get us through customs. The anxiety level at this point is a tad high as we have no idea if anyone willbe there to help us. It is 5:15 AM local time and all I have is the address of the housing area, no specifics.

We went through immigration easily but even that was the first taste of things to come. I had to place my paperwork on the counter, then it is picked up by the individual at customs. David coud just hand his to the person. We walked through to the other side, grabbed luggage and hoped someone would be there. There was one American and it was my boss, who by some miracle was able to pull everything together and get us to our new home.