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.