...too handsome for my shirt, so handsome it huuuurts!
We're still living in Wonderland, and the craziness continues down the rabbit hole. This is why I never let Mike leave the house, and why I make him cover his face in public. Ha!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/10000341/Saudi-Arabia-deports-irresistible-men-deemed-too-handsome-to-women.html
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Overheard At Our House Today
Today I was sitting on the bench swing with Catherine and Everett, and suddenly something cool and wet fell on my foot. I thought, "Did a bird just poop on my foot? Or maybe a bug?" I looked down and saw a drop of water. "But the sprinklers are off," I thought. "Where did that come from? The roof?" While I was thinking about it, another drop landed on the same foot. "What is going on?" I thought. And then the following words were emitted from my mouth, in honest bewilderment and great indignation:
"What is going on?! DROPS OF WATER ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY!"
Everett cocked his head and just looked at me. Then it dawned on me. Oh! It's raining!
I think I've been here too long and my brain has been cooked.
In my defense, though, it was devil's rain - rain from a blue sky. There were no dark clouds, and in fact, while there were some sparse clouds around, there were absolutely no clouds directly over our heads. It must have been coming in at an angle.
Weather here is weird because it is virtually nonexistent. There is almost never any rain, and we never ever get any puffy or billowy clouds. It's only high, icy, cirrus clouds for us. That and dust. The temperature is either cool, or warm, or hot, or way too hot, but never cold or damp. There's no weather report to be had, either. No radar screen or satellite imagery or jet stream or cold fronts.
It took some getting used to to start ignoring the weather. In the beginning it really bothered me, because I wanted to know when we might be getting more high clouds or more dust or hotter or cooler temperatures. What was going on up there in the sky? Is there a system coming out of Egypt that we should be concerned about? Will the winds change this afternoon to be blowing in from the Gulf? But after 16 months of no information, I've learned to accept my daily weather ignorance. So much so that I seem to have forgotten about rain.
Some days I really would love a humongous, dark, electric, prolonged thunderstorm. You know, the kind they get in Florida or Texas. Something really exciting. Something to prepare for and watch. Something different than hot, dry, and dusty. But to get that, I'll either have to idle my car engine in an effort to increase global climate change or wait for repat. Because those two drops I got on my foot today? That's was it. Our total annual rainfall just fell on my foot.
Sorry, plants. You don't get any this year.
"What is going on?! DROPS OF WATER ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY!"
Everett cocked his head and just looked at me. Then it dawned on me. Oh! It's raining!
I think I've been here too long and my brain has been cooked.
In my defense, though, it was devil's rain - rain from a blue sky. There were no dark clouds, and in fact, while there were some sparse clouds around, there were absolutely no clouds directly over our heads. It must have been coming in at an angle.
Weather here is weird because it is virtually nonexistent. There is almost never any rain, and we never ever get any puffy or billowy clouds. It's only high, icy, cirrus clouds for us. That and dust. The temperature is either cool, or warm, or hot, or way too hot, but never cold or damp. There's no weather report to be had, either. No radar screen or satellite imagery or jet stream or cold fronts.
It took some getting used to to start ignoring the weather. In the beginning it really bothered me, because I wanted to know when we might be getting more high clouds or more dust or hotter or cooler temperatures. What was going on up there in the sky? Is there a system coming out of Egypt that we should be concerned about? Will the winds change this afternoon to be blowing in from the Gulf? But after 16 months of no information, I've learned to accept my daily weather ignorance. So much so that I seem to have forgotten about rain.
Some days I really would love a humongous, dark, electric, prolonged thunderstorm. You know, the kind they get in Florida or Texas. Something really exciting. Something to prepare for and watch. Something different than hot, dry, and dusty. But to get that, I'll either have to idle my car engine in an effort to increase global climate change or wait for repat. Because those two drops I got on my foot today? That's was it. Our total annual rainfall just fell on my foot.
Sorry, plants. You don't get any this year.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Earthquakes
There have been three earthquakes in our part of the world recently: two in Iran and one in Pakistan. The first one in Iran was felt in Dhahran, although neither Mike nor I felt it. People who felt it said that it felt like a big truck driving close by your building. Apparently, several buildings in Khobar were evacuated, and they considered evacuating Al Midra (the building with the windows falling out), but they decided not to. <shakes head in dismay> Come on people. What are you THINKING?
The second one in Iran was felt in Bahrain, but I don't think anyone felt it here. We did not feel the one from Pakistan.
All this because the Arabian peninsula and Iran are crashing together - cool! Bye bye, Persian Gulf, in several million years! Hello, new ocean in the African Rift Valley! Plate tectonics is amazing.
The second one in Iran was felt in Bahrain, but I don't think anyone felt it here. We did not feel the one from Pakistan.
All this because the Arabian peninsula and Iran are crashing together - cool! Bye bye, Persian Gulf, in several million years! Hello, new ocean in the African Rift Valley! Plate tectonics is amazing.
Driving Tour of Dhahran
Since you are reading this blog, you must be looking for a time waster. :) Well, in that case, check this out: somebody posted a driving tour of our fair city! The link is below. A couple of things to mention, first, though.
1) Please turn off your speakers. The music they slapped on top of this video has the double whammy of being both terrible AND repetitive. Believe it or not, I would really rather listen to the actual ambient sounds of both the incessant, insistant, grinding whir of approximately 6000 heavy-duty air conditioning compressors AND the deafening roar of F-15s flying 200 feet overhead approximately once per minute. Sure, they are loud, but much better than that awful music.
2) Camp is made up of two residential sections separated by a golf course. It's rather like the shape of a barbell, with the bar being the golf course. There are roads along the top and bottom of the golf course that connect one residential part ("Main Camp") with the other part ("Dhahran Hills" or just "The Hills.") The commissary, the movie theater, the library, the barbershop, the mail center, etc., etc., are all in Main Camp, which is the first part of the movie (but the movie only shows you the houses.) Rolling Hills Boulevard is one of the connecting roads, and then we live in the Hills, which is the second part of the movie. When you get to the playground, that is our street! And that is our playground! To get to our house, you would just turn right rather than left and go up about four or five houses on the left side. But you might as well have seen our house...all the houses in our part of camp are the same. That style is called "adobe," as in "We live in an adobe," or "All the houses on our street are adobes." Lots of the houses on Main Camp are prefab homes, called "modulars." Also, pay attention to the rear parking lot of the Hills Rec Center. We walk across that parking lot all the time! We cross Riyadh Road from our house and walk through the parking lot to get to the pool and the squash courts. (We don't play squash, but it's a nice air conditioned room the kids can run around in when it's too hot to do anything else.)
3) Notice how the sky is yellow, not blue. Yay, dust from the desert!
http://www.aramcoexpats.com/articles/2013/04/a-driving-tour-of-dhahran/
So that's where we live. Hope this gives you a better sense of Camp!
1) Please turn off your speakers. The music they slapped on top of this video has the double whammy of being both terrible AND repetitive. Believe it or not, I would really rather listen to the actual ambient sounds of both the incessant, insistant, grinding whir of approximately 6000 heavy-duty air conditioning compressors AND the deafening roar of F-15s flying 200 feet overhead approximately once per minute. Sure, they are loud, but much better than that awful music.
2) Camp is made up of two residential sections separated by a golf course. It's rather like the shape of a barbell, with the bar being the golf course. There are roads along the top and bottom of the golf course that connect one residential part ("Main Camp") with the other part ("Dhahran Hills" or just "The Hills.") The commissary, the movie theater, the library, the barbershop, the mail center, etc., etc., are all in Main Camp, which is the first part of the movie (but the movie only shows you the houses.) Rolling Hills Boulevard is one of the connecting roads, and then we live in the Hills, which is the second part of the movie. When you get to the playground, that is our street! And that is our playground! To get to our house, you would just turn right rather than left and go up about four or five houses on the left side. But you might as well have seen our house...all the houses in our part of camp are the same. That style is called "adobe," as in "We live in an adobe," or "All the houses on our street are adobes." Lots of the houses on Main Camp are prefab homes, called "modulars." Also, pay attention to the rear parking lot of the Hills Rec Center. We walk across that parking lot all the time! We cross Riyadh Road from our house and walk through the parking lot to get to the pool and the squash courts. (We don't play squash, but it's a nice air conditioned room the kids can run around in when it's too hot to do anything else.)
3) Notice how the sky is yellow, not blue. Yay, dust from the desert!
http://www.aramcoexpats.com/articles/2013/04/a-driving-tour-of-dhahran/
So that's where we live. Hope this gives you a better sense of Camp!
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Digging for Sand Roses
A few weeks ago, we got to go dig for sand roses, which is a really unique thing that you can do here in Saudi Arabia. I was so glad we got to go! Mike has a colleague who knows where to go to dig, and he very graciously led our family and one other family out into the desert and showed us what to do. It was just a morning, but we had a great time and came home with lots of little souvenirs.
Here is what we were digging for:
This is a sand rose. It is made of crystallized minerals that form at the interface of ground water and sand, underground. If the water table is not very far underground, it's not that hard to dig down to it and find these sand roses. Some are big (size of a piano bench) and some are small (size of your fist). They are often found in the sabkhas (/sub-kuhs/) (flat, salty land) near where we live because the conditions are right to form them there.
We always see these trucks on this highway. (???) Sounds dangerous. I mean, doesn't sulfur have to be hot to be molten? I know sulfur at room temperature is a yellow solid. It's brimstone, as in "fire and brimstone." Why would you melt it and put it in a truck? And on THESE most dangerous highways? Yay, Saudis.
past a camel farm,
and just started to dig in the desert. This was a nice sabkha that Mike's colleague had been to before.
Everett spotted camel tracks!
The men were digging and the boys were playing. This country is just one big giant sand box. We brought all the sand toys with us.
Our spot in the big empty desert.
While we were digging, some friendly camels happened by. We drove over to where they were on top of a nearby dune.
They were very tame and let us pet them. They probably belong to somebody, but they are just allowed to roam the desert.
Then two camels got together. And here we are in the middle!
Lawrence loved petting the camel's knees.
I was holding Lawrence up to pet the camel when the second camel got really close to me and trapped me in between them. I just knew I was going to be squished (death by camel) or spit on (more likely!). But I just backed away slowly and it was ok. They were big and stinky and intimidating, but it was fun anyway.
So anyway, back to digging! About four feet down, (amazingly!) the guys hit WATER. WOW! In the desert! The interface between the sand and the water is where you find sand roses.
When you dig them up, you have to wash them off in water (which we brought) to see what you've got.
People that have come to this spot before have thrown their unwanted sand roses on the desert floor. They were all around.
Here is what we were digging for:
This is a sand rose. It is made of crystallized minerals that form at the interface of ground water and sand, underground. If the water table is not very far underground, it's not that hard to dig down to it and find these sand roses. Some are big (size of a piano bench) and some are small (size of your fist). They are often found in the sabkhas (/sub-kuhs/) (flat, salty land) near where we live because the conditions are right to form them there.
We drove out about 45 minutes from camp. We started on the highway, just out in the desert
We always see these trucks on this highway. (???) Sounds dangerous. I mean, doesn't sulfur have to be hot to be molten? I know sulfur at room temperature is a yellow solid. It's brimstone, as in "fire and brimstone." Why would you melt it and put it in a truck? And on THESE most dangerous highways? Yay, Saudis.
Then we turned off at the Junkyard/Cattle Market exit,
went past the charcoal souks (markets),
past a camel farm, 
and turned off the paved road, into the desert. This is analogous to turning off the paved road in the South.
Driving in the sand was fun! Just don't get stuck. (We don't have four wheel drive.)
Past another Bedouin site, this one with an albino camel.
And then we parked our car and got out,
and just started to dig in the desert. This was a nice sabkha that Mike's colleague had been to before.
Everett spotted camel tracks!
The men were digging and the boys were playing. This country is just one big giant sand box. We brought all the sand toys with us.
Our spot in the big empty desert.
While we were digging, some friendly camels happened by. We drove over to where they were on top of a nearby dune.
They were very tame and let us pet them. They probably belong to somebody, but they are just allowed to roam the desert.
Then two camels got together. And here we are in the middle!
Lawrence loved petting the camel's knees.
I was holding Lawrence up to pet the camel when the second camel got really close to me and trapped me in between them. I just knew I was going to be squished (death by camel) or spit on (more likely!). But I just backed away slowly and it was ok. They were big and stinky and intimidating, but it was fun anyway.
So anyway, back to digging! About four feet down, (amazingly!) the guys hit WATER. WOW! In the desert! The interface between the sand and the water is where you find sand roses.
When you dig them up, you have to wash them off in water (which we brought) to see what you've got.
People that have come to this spot before have thrown their unwanted sand roses on the desert floor. They were all around.
We came back with that green bin about half full of sand roses, most about the size of one or two fists. We put them in the three empty planters in our front courtyard. They look great! Now that we know where to go, we hope to go back again to get some even bigger ones.
Trip to the Propane Store
Hello again. I find myself again amazingly behind on my postings. Rather than try to explain or excuse myself, I'll just dive right back in. This is an old one; I wrote it several weeks ago when the internet was flaky, but it's better now so I can post the pictures. It's funny. You'll like it.
This post is about our trip to the propane store. Well, "store" is a stretch. It's more like a dingy corner in between buildings with only three walls and no roof where some guy who doesn't speak any English happens to have a lot of propane tanks for sale. But "Our Trip To The Dingy Corner In Between Buildings With Only Three Walls And No Roof Where Some Guy Who Doesn't Speak Any English Happens To Have a Lot Of Propane Tanks For Sale" has too many characters for the blogger title line. So "Propane Store" it is.
Let me give you some background here. When our stuff got packed up in Charlotte, naturally we chose to have our grill packed too. It didn't even occur to us not to bring it. It was just part of our patio furniture. Of course, when your household belongings are being shipped overseas, you are not supposed to bring anything flammable, so the tank had to be disconnected. (I'm still not sure what happened to it. Is it still in our little outside closet in our house? Did we give it to one of our neighbors? The move was so overwhelming and we were so sick by the end that I have no memory at all of what we did with it.)
When our shipment arrived here more than a year ago, here was our tankless grill out on our new patio. We took a month or two to deal with getting all our worldly possessions unpacked, and having my parents come for a visit from the States, and having a baby, and whatnot - you know, regular old boring stuff that doesn't take all of your attention or anything - and eventually we looked around and said, wow, our grill is a big paperweight. But getting stuff over here is not easy, whether it's paper towels or cottage cheese or silver polish, and finding a place that sold propane tanks seemed like a daunting task. Especially since it took us 5 1/2 weeks to find somewhere to buy doormats. We asked all around and eventually somebody said that there was a place in Khobar near the Hardees that sold propane tanks. Mike finally got to go there one day in the afternoon, and he found the place, but they only sell the Saudi kind that have the wrong kind of adapter on the hose. And that was it. No solution. Our grill became a real paperweight - Everett used it to hold his artwork on the ground and that was about all it was good for, besides being a shelter for the brown widow spiders that have invaded our yard, which is the subject of another post.
Fourteen months later, here we are still, no tank. Until somebody mentioned to us that there is a new grill and patio furniture store that just opened that sells American style tanks. It only took us 3 weeks to get there this time, and - you will never believe this - they DID have American style tanks, and they WERE in stock and they WILLING to sell us one RIGHT THEN. WOW!!! Success!! (You people in America will not be able to appreciate this, but the fact that we went to a store and got what we wanted the first time was utterly euphoric.)
Of course, it came empty.
But that's no big deal right? We know where that Saudi propane store is, you know, the one in Khobar by the Hardees? We can get propane there! This time, a couple of weeks later, we all got to go, instead of just Mike. I am glad I had the experience, but I was so worried that that place was going to explode any second that I don't think I really want to go back any time soon. Check it out.
(<Whipered: by the way, just in case you happen to be looking for a way to blow up most of Khobar, all you'd have to do is toss a bottle rocket in here.>)
It's hard to explain, but this place is really just three and a half
walls in between buildings in downtown Khobar. You are supposed to
drive in through the opening in the half wall and park in front of this
big platform that looks like a stage. The stage has all these orange propane tanks on it.
The guys in the above picture are on the stage and I am in the car surreptitiously taking pictures. It is very small - the open part in the right corner is one wall and the other wall is just off the left side of the picture. If I turn my head left, the below picture is what I see:
This is the side wall, and those are propane tanks (the Saudi kind). There is a guy driving a fork lift, moving the full tanks from the wall to the stage. He picks them up <SCRAPE> and drives to the stage, and scrapes them off <SCRAPE>, and all I can think about is how this awful metal scraping can make lots of SPARKS! Yikes!
It's tight in there - space for three cars - and the forklift did its work about six inches from our car. Here is a load of tanks it is scraping onto the stage.
Guys on the stage. The guy in white seemed to be the owner, and the guy in the yellow was an employee. That is Mike on the very right. The whole time we were there, there was a steady stream of people walking in with money, handing the men the money and walking away with a tank. Nothing was documented and most people had on just dirty thobes and sandals, which made it seem almost like Biblical times. But with propane tanks instead of, say, frankincense and myrrh.
Now he's on my side. They used this big metal bar to scrape the tanks off the forklift.
Right as we were leaving, the forklift and another car moved away, and I looked over on the side wall. Apparently, this is where they have their fire suppression system:
So while I was taking all these pictures, Mike was doing charades and getting the guy to fill up our American propane tank. And he did! And we got out of there with our lives! And we hooked up our grill and it worked! So fifteen total months of trying and failing to solve our problem is over. Fire up the grill! It's Benchich Burgers tonight!
This post is about our trip to the propane store. Well, "store" is a stretch. It's more like a dingy corner in between buildings with only three walls and no roof where some guy who doesn't speak any English happens to have a lot of propane tanks for sale. But "Our Trip To The Dingy Corner In Between Buildings With Only Three Walls And No Roof Where Some Guy Who Doesn't Speak Any English Happens To Have a Lot Of Propane Tanks For Sale" has too many characters for the blogger title line. So "Propane Store" it is.
Let me give you some background here. When our stuff got packed up in Charlotte, naturally we chose to have our grill packed too. It didn't even occur to us not to bring it. It was just part of our patio furniture. Of course, when your household belongings are being shipped overseas, you are not supposed to bring anything flammable, so the tank had to be disconnected. (I'm still not sure what happened to it. Is it still in our little outside closet in our house? Did we give it to one of our neighbors? The move was so overwhelming and we were so sick by the end that I have no memory at all of what we did with it.)
When our shipment arrived here more than a year ago, here was our tankless grill out on our new patio. We took a month or two to deal with getting all our worldly possessions unpacked, and having my parents come for a visit from the States, and having a baby, and whatnot - you know, regular old boring stuff that doesn't take all of your attention or anything - and eventually we looked around and said, wow, our grill is a big paperweight. But getting stuff over here is not easy, whether it's paper towels or cottage cheese or silver polish, and finding a place that sold propane tanks seemed like a daunting task. Especially since it took us 5 1/2 weeks to find somewhere to buy doormats. We asked all around and eventually somebody said that there was a place in Khobar near the Hardees that sold propane tanks. Mike finally got to go there one day in the afternoon, and he found the place, but they only sell the Saudi kind that have the wrong kind of adapter on the hose. And that was it. No solution. Our grill became a real paperweight - Everett used it to hold his artwork on the ground and that was about all it was good for, besides being a shelter for the brown widow spiders that have invaded our yard, which is the subject of another post.
Fourteen months later, here we are still, no tank. Until somebody mentioned to us that there is a new grill and patio furniture store that just opened that sells American style tanks. It only took us 3 weeks to get there this time, and - you will never believe this - they DID have American style tanks, and they WERE in stock and they WILLING to sell us one RIGHT THEN. WOW!!! Success!! (You people in America will not be able to appreciate this, but the fact that we went to a store and got what we wanted the first time was utterly euphoric.)
Of course, it came empty.
But that's no big deal right? We know where that Saudi propane store is, you know, the one in Khobar by the Hardees? We can get propane there! This time, a couple of weeks later, we all got to go, instead of just Mike. I am glad I had the experience, but I was so worried that that place was going to explode any second that I don't think I really want to go back any time soon. Check it out.
(<Whipered: by the way, just in case you happen to be looking for a way to blow up most of Khobar, all you'd have to do is toss a bottle rocket in here.>)
Forklift guy backing up toward us.
Right as we were leaving, the forklift and another car moved away, and I looked over on the side wall. Apparently, this is where they have their fire suppression system:
Impressive.
So while I was taking all these pictures, Mike was doing charades and getting the guy to fill up our American propane tank. And he did! And we got out of there with our lives! And we hooked up our grill and it worked! So fifteen total months of trying and failing to solve our problem is over. Fire up the grill! It's Benchich Burgers tonight!
Monday, March 25, 2013
Ridiculous
More ridiculousness from the government...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21932432
and also
http://www.arabnews.com/news/446001
UGH. Really?
Back to really expensive phone calls and four month snail mail. I suppose this is what I get for complaining about the Company not being like it used to be. Ha!
So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1989...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21932432
and also
http://www.arabnews.com/news/446001
UGH. Really?
Back to really expensive phone calls and four month snail mail. I suppose this is what I get for complaining about the Company not being like it used to be. Ha!
So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1989...
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