Tuesday 29th December 2009
Seems an odd day of the week to do a blog, doesn't it? Yeah I guess so. Why not do it tomorrow? Well, that is always my intention, but I always find that, because of the masses that go online from here on Wednesday evenings, the connection speed is always rubbish.
Anyway, today I FEEL LIKE doing it. Getting very conscious of the frequency of my blogs going down rapidly and I don't want to forget stuff that SHOULD go in.
As always I digress. Now to the main point of writing this entry which is, as the threatening title shows, the 'comeback' of someone I REALLY did NOT want to ever see again in any classroom situation. Or any OTHER situation come to think of it. Yes, sadly it IS a fact that the one known as Monitor Man HAS made a reappearance in my class list from last week.
How could this happen? Well, it is quite simply this. Remember some time ago I was blogging about the second of the new teachers who was causing chaos and bad feeling amongst everyone he met? The teacher who let his classes go when he wanted and who didn't turn up to classes when he felt like it. And the one who not many people ever saw much of and who made little effort to take part in anything.
Well, FINALLY the decision was made and he was shown his cards and WAS sacked. Because it was still inside the 90-day Probationary Period, they were able to do this with almost no notice at all. And good riddance to him! Actually I didn't think they'd do it, so for ONCE they have acted as they should.
That left a problem. What to do with his students – the ones my colleague and I had suffered with when they were still army boys. Well, the answer soon came on the Wednesday afternoon, and that was that they were to be “redistributed”.
When I heard THAT word, I immediately thought the worst. Could this mean that I would ONCE AGAIN be seeing old faces that I'd rather NOT?? The ones that I had successfully been able to ignore and walk on by and disassociate myself with because they were finally out of my hands??
Well, yes, the answer was of course that it COULD mean JUST THAT!
There you go! As always, just when I start to get settled into some kind of comfortable-ish way of doing things here, this place throws the spanner in the works and unsettles things again and slaps me in the face. Well, you know by now that you can NEVER be too comfortable here and there is always SOMETHING else that WILL come along to upset the apple-cart.
I had a mental list of ex-army boys who I definitely did NOT want to see the names of first thing Saturday. Well, I had two or three graded lists depending on the irritation value of the people concerned. On List #1 (the 'Red List' you could say) were ones like those I used to call 'Leg Man', 'Monitor Man' and one or two others. Any of THEM on my new class list and ….
Well, what WOULD I do exactly?? Scenarios played out in my head a-plenty. What I felt I HAD to do was, in the event of any of these BEING there, lay down the law EARLY on. Do it on that FIRST day! Read 'em the proverbial “Riot Act”! Nip any likely trouble in the bud!
This class I have now is a fairly settled one. What it DOES NOT NEED is any kind of idiots coming in and destroying the way that we work! I will NOT have any kind of return to army-boy-class days after a good and enjoyable of teaching.
Saturday morning came and in I went. I went in and one of them was sitting there. OK, a not-bad start – this one was not too bad who was sitting there. So the lesson got started and then in came the college registrar with a few more. They were OK too. He gave me the new class list. And my eyes POPPED OUT when I saw it!!
He was on there. His name was on that list. It was the Return Of Monitor Man to my class. My first reaction to it was that I had to say, “Sorry but I will not accept this man!”, and I started saying it but then stopped.
Well, be realistic! WHAT could I actually DO?? This college registrar wouldn't understand and I would not be able to explain to him WHY I did NOT want this asshole in my nice class! He was just doing his job and it would not change anything if I objected. And anyway, I wasn't going to waste class time on such a matter.
The only thing I could do, I decided, and the only action I could take was unilateral. Would have to decide for MYSELF what I was going to do with this moron.
Fortunately he was not there that day. Was my luck in??
Sadly not. They had a computing test on the Sunday – well when I say “they”, I mean the class-that-was-a-class boys. A reason for him to come in then on the Sunday. And so he did.
Time was going on well. We had got to 11 o'clock and only another fifteen minutes needed to pass that session of the day. I was at the back helping students with something, it was the desk nearest the door and I was facing the door. And there he came.
There was NO WAY I was going to let him in! Here he was attempting to stroll in with no books and no pens as far as I could see. This was not army boy days now and there was NO REASON I had to. He is a college student now and out of army uniform and so just like ANY OTHER student.
He opened the door. I stopped him in his tracks. “Go away!”, I said, “You have no books, no pens, nothing. And look at the time!”. He attempted to argue but I waved him away and didn't let him in even to sit down. I moved away from that desk. He was still trying to communicate. But I ignored him and gestured him more to go away. And in the end he DID!
HAH!! Victory #1 goes to ME!! YOU are not coming in, FUCKER, no matter WHAT happens!!
The next day, Monday, no appearance. Apparently he had not been seen for weeks anyway. I vainly hoped he might not turn up again, but on the Tuesday he did.
He appeared at the door after lesson start. “Can I come in?”, he asked, somewhat sheepishly. “Where are your books?”, I said, noting that he had none in his hand. “In my room”, was his reply. “So go and get them then!”, I said.
This time, I thought, let's actually give him just one chance. Maybe he has improved through being out of army uniform. So that day I DID let him in, and in he came and greeted the others as he did so.
For part of the lesson he attempted to do what the others were doing. But he only had a photocopy of his ONE book. HAH!The man who was boasting how much he had paid for his sunglasses and mocking the other students for their cars and such-like could NOT EVEN SHELL OUT FOR HIS OWN BOOKS!!!
However, it was not to last as you might expect. I kept my eye on him. He had his music on, headphones were in, the phone was out in his hands and he was turning around to disturb his 'classmates' who were sitting behind him. After the long break time he didn't even have the next book we were using and the page that was open remained the SAME PAGE the whole lesson.
In fact, that SAME PAGE remained open at the SAME PLACE even the next day. And yes, it was on the SAME PLACE on his desk as the day before when we came to the post lunchtime session which he was absent from.
So, as Levi Stubbs and the Four Tops once sang, with him it's the Same Old Song! Well, I gave him his chance to see if he was going to make an effort. Quite simply, HE BLEW IT!!
Now, for last week, I quite DELIBERATELY marked him as ABSENT for EVERY DAY of that week apart from those four lesson periods he WAS actually here. Yes …. he was and is absent today, tomorrow, next week, next month and as long as I am teacher of that class he will ALWAYS be so. I am quite simply NOT having someone like HIM in my class to cause the SAME problems as he did with that other class!! We do NOT need that kind of person in our class!
Interestingly enough, his ex-army-boy classmates attempted to defend him and say he was “a good student”. Did they really MEAN THAT?? Or maybe it was just the “trying to help out a fellow ex-army-boy classmate” - the kind of “good Moslem deed for the day” attitude?
The third time he has attempted to come in was really the WORST of the lot. It was yesterday, Monday – the first time I have seen him this week. On Mondays I start later than normal at 9.30am which is after the long break time and after the two periods of computing lesson that they have before me.
On this day, at the start of the lesson some of the students were fussing round at the front wanting to see my class register for this week and how many times they had been absent. They are actually pretty annoying in this, and we seem to battling continually with me explaining that If You Are Not Here Then You Are Absent and them failing to get this into their heads. Being LATE is also marked as being absent here, and if someone comes after the register has been marked, then they have one absent mark against their name. I've written about this before, and it IS intended to make sure they come on time though actually does not work and they STILL come to me at the end of the lesson to ask WHY I have marked them absent.
Honestly, I am SO TIRED of explaining what is REALLY a Very Simple Thing! It is not, as the saying goes, any kind of Rocket Science. Really ALL they have to do is NOT be late for class.
Anyway, they and I had had a long and senseless discussion the previous day about such things. Many had been absent on Sunday afternoon because of fasting due to it being the “Ashura” time of year in the Moslem calendar. This is actually a festival for Shia Moslems of which there are many in this, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. But, although it is a festival, it is NOT a holiday in the Saudi calendar since this is a Sunni Moslem country primarily. Because of this, of course if they chose not to come that afternoon, they were marked as absent. And they moaned and moaned about it!
Anyway, back to what happened with Monitor Man. He was one of those at the front having a look. I was tired of all this fussing around at the front so I shoo-ed them all away. I wanted to get started and yet they were, as always, fussing around over this thong again. So I was pretty wound up anyway.
Next, WHO should come in the room WTHOUT KNOCKING was, yes, you've guessed it, the one and only LEG MAN! I straight away told him to Get Out. He wanted his keys, he said, from his friend Monitor Man. So give him his keys, I said to MM. “No”, was the reply. “No!”, I relayed the message back to Leg Man. “I need my keys!”. He said again.
Ohh, NOW I had these TWO assholes acting together now, did I?? Leg Man wouldn't go out and Monitor Man wouldn't go back to his seat. ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH!!
“Right, you and YOU just BOTH GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM!”. No, they wouldn't – either of them. I was NOT going to be moved! I went to the back of the classroom and opened the door. “Right, YOU out and YOU ALSO – OUT!!”, I indicated to them both. “You are not even IN THIS CLASS, and YOU I have had enough of! GET OUT!!”. “No!”, said Monitor Man. “GET OUT!!”, I repeated. “No!”, he said again. Leg Man was still standing by the door as I was there holding it open for both of them.
OK, so they were refusing to leave. The next thing I was about to do was to go get the Student Affairs man to REMOVE THEM both. As I was thinking about this, another of the army men came into view in the area outside the classrooms. He is one of those MANY who comes in to relay messages to the students (rather too often!). Now, I have NO IDEA if this man speaks any English or not – it is quite possible that he doesn't in which case he didn't understand a WORD I was to say to him next.
He came over. I told him, “THIS student here refuses to leave my classroom, and THIS one here is not even IN this class!”. I said I had asked him to but he had refused to do so. The guy did not say anything (most probably he DIDN'T understand me!). All that happened next was that Monitor Man launched into this load of Arabic pointing and stabbing his finger at me and at the registers in my hand most likely telling this guy what an unreasonable bastard I was and that I was marking him absent a lot. Well, that's quite a complement (if that's what was said), and being an "unreasonable bastard" to someone like Monitor Man has to be satisfying. The army guy again didn't say anything, and to be frank there was nothing he COULD say really. In the end, after his Arabic rant, Monitor Man opened the drawer of his desk, took out his books that were there (so it seems he DID have them after all!) and stormed out followed by his buddy the Leg Man, who helped him on his way.
“Thank you”, I said to the army man who had stood there all this time not saying a thing and was probably complete the wrong guy to have called in. Away he went, I closed the door and the classroom was at peace again.
“You SEE what he is like!!”, I YELLED as I went back to the front, “He is in here for not even TEN MINUTES and we have PROBLEMS like this!”
However …. it was not QUITE over. AGAIN my class wanted to discuss the fucking SAME FUCKING ISSSUE of being absent of not with reference to Sunday afternoon!! Ohh, couldn't they JUST leave it alone now?? “How many TIMES do I have to EXPLAIN this to you??”, I yelled, “IF you are not here, YOU ARE ABSENT!! It is REALLY NOT DIFFICULT!!”. “But how do you know I was absent when you were off ill yesterday afternoon?”, one demanded to know. Yes, I had had to go home early Sunday afternoon because of ill-health (AGAIN!), and I had marked those here at 12.30 pm as Present and all others as Absent. But still they went on.
Somehow that issue came to a close and we DID manage to get on with some kind of lesson that day. I had felt rough coming IN that morning – but NOW it was REALLY not the start to a day that I wanted.
So …. that is the Monitor Man situation as up-to-date as I know it now. Is he gone for good? I hope so. I thought of going to the college registrar and trying some way to push him into some other class in exchange for another. Well, one of my current students has, for some reason, been put into “Class 1” without notifying me. Maybe, I thought, I can engineer a 'swap' back. But I abandoned that idea as I could not come up with enough good reason why I wanted the asshole out.
Being an asshole is not enough to kick him out my class, you see. Maybe a Disciplinary Report? Maybe not.
Look, I have just over six weeks to go. All I want is to get through that remaining time as peacefully and reasonably as I can without creating more disturbance than is necessary.
By the look of these last two weeks, I don't think I got a CAT IN HELL"S CHANCE!
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Monday, 21 December 2009
The Good Things about Saudi Arabia life
Friday 18th December 2009
Well this is one of those annoying days when I am sitting here unable to get online because I have, apparently, used up all my online surfing quota of gigabytes. And THAT is TWICE this has happened this month! 1GB has, so they say, been used up in under TEN DAYS and I hardly did a thing. Yes, a few downloads here and there but I was not doing any of the heavyweight downloading stuff that I normally like to do online. The only thing that MIGHT have used up a lot is my FTP uploading and downloading to create and amend my websites. Well, if THAT is counted (and I'm sure it is) then yes it is conceivably possible that 1GB could have been eaten up in that way. But STILL it makes me angry! I am ONCE AGAIN being denied internet access and what's more I have to waste another taxi-ride trip into town to pay to restore it!
So I'm not at all happy. So I thought that today I would try and calm myself by trying to remind myself of the good things that thee are about being here living and working in this country even with all its irritations.
Good things about being in Saudi Arabia?? What kind of BONKERS writing is THIS today, you ask yourselves. Well, yes, you may be right about THAT, but with no internet access today (I'll go in tomorrow to pay), I am in need of something to do and what better than to “put pen to paper” and do what I enjoy the most – WRITING!
OK, so here we go. Now, I must tell you that I had to think long and hard to come up with many of these. And sadly the majority of them are work-related good things. Why is that sad? Well, of COURSE it is sad because work is not ALL the life out here. If I was able to switch off COMPLETELY after work and not let anything pass into me then it would be fine. If my time after work was a case of climbing into some kind of cryogenic chamber which would keep me frozen in suspended animation till the next morning (or, better still, over the weekend) then that would help things here I guess. With no non-work time to get bored with, it might be a more enjoyable “show”.
Anyway, enough of yer cheeky sarcasm sir! Let's get on with what we came here for. Here, then, in no particular order are the Good Things About Saudi Arabia Life:-
1. The job is a secure one – there is not much chance of getting sacked or being made redundant out here. Not as an English Teacher anyway. And since it is so hard to get in new teachers, it makes our position in our jobs even more secure. You have to REALLY screw up out here if you want to be on the early plane-ride back home. And in these times of economic instability, security is not a bad thing at all!
2. The PAY, of course, is very good – goes without saying really. Yes, I know that where I work the pay level is rather at the lower end of the pay-scale in this country for teachers. But that aside, a tax-free salary reliably coming to you each and every month no matter how many hours you work is something that no-one can complain about. And they DO pay on time EVERY time!
3. The ease of doing the job – now, let's set aside the high number of hours that I am currently doing a week (twenty-seven teaching hours a week). I have not felt at any time that I was under pressure from the 'management' to do things I did not want to do. Well, I am talking about the WAYS of actual teaching and NOT about other sillies they throw in to get your back up. There are some employers that try to impose too much on the teacher in terms of what he/she SHOULD or MUST do in the classroom. You know the sort – those places that have THEIR METHOD of teaching which you MUST follow OR ELSE. Here so long as you follow the syllabus (yes yes there wasn't one with the soldier boys' class but that's an exception), then you really can't go wrong!
4. The journey from home to work is only five or ten minutes at most – who else can say THAT about where they work in a large city these days? And no public transport is needed – it is a simple 5-10 minute wander up the road or through the gate and you are THERE with no delays possible (except if you get up late).
5. Free medical care and free prescriptions – this is, of course, the benefit of working in a hospital compound with a doctor and hospital on the doorstep. Yes yes, again, I have written plenty about the incompetence and idiocy of the doctor we have to use. But that aside, all medicines are free and all we have to do is take the prescription to the hospital pharmacy, queue up a bit and it comes. All emergency health care is free here though if anything more complex is needed then I would have to pay.
6. A subsidised and really good hospital canteen for everyone that works here – very cheap lunchtime meals and, if you want it, evening meals and breakfasts too. And in the majority of cases, the food is always very good and the choice is excellent. I have started going more to the canteen now as going home at lunchtimes gives too little time to have a proper lunchtime in peace without rushing.
7. No bills to pay apart from internet access – yes indeed! We have no gas bills, no electricity bills, no laundry bills (the washing machine is down the corridor together with a tumble dryer), no bus or train season tickets are needed to get to work. Really all we have to pay for is food, taxis to town and internet every month. Mind you, for me that seems to be quite a large chunk of my monthly outgoings. If I had thought about my food needs more, I would have spent more time in the canteen and would have spent less down town in the supermarkets. Something to note here is that I spend something like one-third or half my weekly shopping bill on CHEESE. But it is SO EXPENSIVE here! For the kind of cheese I like we are talking about prices of anything from ten British pounds a kilo to maybe FIFTEEN British pounds a kilo!! Not cheap! But I cannot do without my cheese so that's that. And the cheese here is imported I guess so that's the reason. And I have said more than enough about internet costs already. Taking away food and internet leaves very little expenditure overall.
8. The accommodation is free too – yes it might not be a palace and to some it is not much of an idea of a place to spend your non-work time. Some people criticise it more than others. Some people go out to Ikea and buy cushions, lamps, satellite TV subscriptions, coffee makers, rugs and nice smells to try to make it more homely where they are. Personally my philosophy of a living space is this: it is not what it looks like but it is how you FEEL there and what you DO there. I have rarely felt the need to go out and buy lots of ridiculous things to “try” to make it more of a nice place to live in. My needs in this way are rather basic. I have heard many comments from other teachers on “the conditions we have to live in” and “how disgusting the carpets are” and such like. For me, so long as I can be basically comfortable and can be warm when I want to be and cool when I want to be then that is important.
9. The soundproofing of the walls – in many such accommodation blocks around Europe it seems the walls are paper-thin and you can here what is going on to the left of you, to the right of you and also above and below your flat. All very public! Here I think the walls and structure of the block overall is much more solid concrete. You REALLY cannot hear what is going on around you and nobody can hear YOU either. Sometimes I hear a few sounds from the flats above me and occasionally the odd sound to the left and right. The only weak spot is the door and corridor outside. That is pretty much the only place where noise comes from. So THIS is a big advantage compared to what we know in blocks of flats in Europe.
10. (and the LAST ONE!) It is a safe place to live. On the compound we are in our nice, enclosed little space with no outside world nasties waiting in the shadows to jump on us as we walk home.
PHEW!! That took quite some thinking about! Well, this I suppose is another advantage of living here but I feel loathed to add it - the fact that we DO have so much free time. Yes, in general it is good, but is actually USELESS since we have nothing to do in this free time! We cannot just go down town to the cinema or to a bar or other such place to meet with friends and have a good time. Going down to the centre HAS TO involve a taxi ride. And, actually, there are VERY FEW other of my colleagues here who feel inclined to DO ANYTHING. I remember well when I was approaching my first weekend here in Saudi Arabia way back in mid March. I'm sure I wrote about this. I asked the “innocent” question, “So what do people around here do at weekends?”, because I was hoping the answer would be that people did get together and maybe go down town or do some other social thing together. But the answer to that question was, as we know, “Well, very little actually!”. And so the pattern of life out in Saudi Arabia was set on that very first weekend. I did NOTHING, I went NOWHERE. Somehow the time passed. In that first weekend I had no weekend and only two fairly dull games on my old Dell laptop PC. BBC World was my only saviour – oh, and the washroom on the Friday. Looking back on it, I have NO IDEA HOW I got through it in once mental piece. Fortunately I DID start going into with the new colleague who arrived a week after me. The very act of going INTO town was something I was really afraid of doing myself. It took me quite a few weeks before I was able to do it, and the first time I went on a 'solo' run into town was when my colleague was doing something else. Quickly I discovered that “going into town” only meant getting the taxi from HERE to THERE, doing the shopping, drinking some coffee, eating a bit of cake and returning in another taxi from THERE to HERE. And that pretty much the only 'weekend entertainment' likely was checking out the next “undiscovered” shopping mall.
Ohh, but WHAT A JOY it was that first time I got online! Now bearing in mind that I will be out of here on the 20th February, I have to time my next payment so as to leave me with as little downtime as possible just before I leave here. Tomorrow is the 19th so if I go and pay then, it will give me internet access to, eventually, the 18th February. That should do it.
But that is tomorrow. Today I have to get through net-less. Seven more hours to go ….
Well this is one of those annoying days when I am sitting here unable to get online because I have, apparently, used up all my online surfing quota of gigabytes. And THAT is TWICE this has happened this month! 1GB has, so they say, been used up in under TEN DAYS and I hardly did a thing. Yes, a few downloads here and there but I was not doing any of the heavyweight downloading stuff that I normally like to do online. The only thing that MIGHT have used up a lot is my FTP uploading and downloading to create and amend my websites. Well, if THAT is counted (and I'm sure it is) then yes it is conceivably possible that 1GB could have been eaten up in that way. But STILL it makes me angry! I am ONCE AGAIN being denied internet access and what's more I have to waste another taxi-ride trip into town to pay to restore it!
So I'm not at all happy. So I thought that today I would try and calm myself by trying to remind myself of the good things that thee are about being here living and working in this country even with all its irritations.
Good things about being in Saudi Arabia?? What kind of BONKERS writing is THIS today, you ask yourselves. Well, yes, you may be right about THAT, but with no internet access today (I'll go in tomorrow to pay), I am in need of something to do and what better than to “put pen to paper” and do what I enjoy the most – WRITING!
OK, so here we go. Now, I must tell you that I had to think long and hard to come up with many of these. And sadly the majority of them are work-related good things. Why is that sad? Well, of COURSE it is sad because work is not ALL the life out here. If I was able to switch off COMPLETELY after work and not let anything pass into me then it would be fine. If my time after work was a case of climbing into some kind of cryogenic chamber which would keep me frozen in suspended animation till the next morning (or, better still, over the weekend) then that would help things here I guess. With no non-work time to get bored with, it might be a more enjoyable “show”.
Anyway, enough of yer cheeky sarcasm sir! Let's get on with what we came here for. Here, then, in no particular order are the Good Things About Saudi Arabia Life:-
1. The job is a secure one – there is not much chance of getting sacked or being made redundant out here. Not as an English Teacher anyway. And since it is so hard to get in new teachers, it makes our position in our jobs even more secure. You have to REALLY screw up out here if you want to be on the early plane-ride back home. And in these times of economic instability, security is not a bad thing at all!
2. The PAY, of course, is very good – goes without saying really. Yes, I know that where I work the pay level is rather at the lower end of the pay-scale in this country for teachers. But that aside, a tax-free salary reliably coming to you each and every month no matter how many hours you work is something that no-one can complain about. And they DO pay on time EVERY time!
3. The ease of doing the job – now, let's set aside the high number of hours that I am currently doing a week (twenty-seven teaching hours a week). I have not felt at any time that I was under pressure from the 'management' to do things I did not want to do. Well, I am talking about the WAYS of actual teaching and NOT about other sillies they throw in to get your back up. There are some employers that try to impose too much on the teacher in terms of what he/she SHOULD or MUST do in the classroom. You know the sort – those places that have THEIR METHOD of teaching which you MUST follow OR ELSE. Here so long as you follow the syllabus (yes yes there wasn't one with the soldier boys' class but that's an exception), then you really can't go wrong!
4. The journey from home to work is only five or ten minutes at most – who else can say THAT about where they work in a large city these days? And no public transport is needed – it is a simple 5-10 minute wander up the road or through the gate and you are THERE with no delays possible (except if you get up late).
5. Free medical care and free prescriptions – this is, of course, the benefit of working in a hospital compound with a doctor and hospital on the doorstep. Yes yes, again, I have written plenty about the incompetence and idiocy of the doctor we have to use. But that aside, all medicines are free and all we have to do is take the prescription to the hospital pharmacy, queue up a bit and it comes. All emergency health care is free here though if anything more complex is needed then I would have to pay.
6. A subsidised and really good hospital canteen for everyone that works here – very cheap lunchtime meals and, if you want it, evening meals and breakfasts too. And in the majority of cases, the food is always very good and the choice is excellent. I have started going more to the canteen now as going home at lunchtimes gives too little time to have a proper lunchtime in peace without rushing.
7. No bills to pay apart from internet access – yes indeed! We have no gas bills, no electricity bills, no laundry bills (the washing machine is down the corridor together with a tumble dryer), no bus or train season tickets are needed to get to work. Really all we have to pay for is food, taxis to town and internet every month. Mind you, for me that seems to be quite a large chunk of my monthly outgoings. If I had thought about my food needs more, I would have spent more time in the canteen and would have spent less down town in the supermarkets. Something to note here is that I spend something like one-third or half my weekly shopping bill on CHEESE. But it is SO EXPENSIVE here! For the kind of cheese I like we are talking about prices of anything from ten British pounds a kilo to maybe FIFTEEN British pounds a kilo!! Not cheap! But I cannot do without my cheese so that's that. And the cheese here is imported I guess so that's the reason. And I have said more than enough about internet costs already. Taking away food and internet leaves very little expenditure overall.
8. The accommodation is free too – yes it might not be a palace and to some it is not much of an idea of a place to spend your non-work time. Some people criticise it more than others. Some people go out to Ikea and buy cushions, lamps, satellite TV subscriptions, coffee makers, rugs and nice smells to try to make it more homely where they are. Personally my philosophy of a living space is this: it is not what it looks like but it is how you FEEL there and what you DO there. I have rarely felt the need to go out and buy lots of ridiculous things to “try” to make it more of a nice place to live in. My needs in this way are rather basic. I have heard many comments from other teachers on “the conditions we have to live in” and “how disgusting the carpets are” and such like. For me, so long as I can be basically comfortable and can be warm when I want to be and cool when I want to be then that is important.
9. The soundproofing of the walls – in many such accommodation blocks around Europe it seems the walls are paper-thin and you can here what is going on to the left of you, to the right of you and also above and below your flat. All very public! Here I think the walls and structure of the block overall is much more solid concrete. You REALLY cannot hear what is going on around you and nobody can hear YOU either. Sometimes I hear a few sounds from the flats above me and occasionally the odd sound to the left and right. The only weak spot is the door and corridor outside. That is pretty much the only place where noise comes from. So THIS is a big advantage compared to what we know in blocks of flats in Europe.
10. (and the LAST ONE!) It is a safe place to live. On the compound we are in our nice, enclosed little space with no outside world nasties waiting in the shadows to jump on us as we walk home.
PHEW!! That took quite some thinking about! Well, this I suppose is another advantage of living here but I feel loathed to add it - the fact that we DO have so much free time. Yes, in general it is good, but is actually USELESS since we have nothing to do in this free time! We cannot just go down town to the cinema or to a bar or other such place to meet with friends and have a good time. Going down to the centre HAS TO involve a taxi ride. And, actually, there are VERY FEW other of my colleagues here who feel inclined to DO ANYTHING. I remember well when I was approaching my first weekend here in Saudi Arabia way back in mid March. I'm sure I wrote about this. I asked the “innocent” question, “So what do people around here do at weekends?”, because I was hoping the answer would be that people did get together and maybe go down town or do some other social thing together. But the answer to that question was, as we know, “Well, very little actually!”. And so the pattern of life out in Saudi Arabia was set on that very first weekend. I did NOTHING, I went NOWHERE. Somehow the time passed. In that first weekend I had no weekend and only two fairly dull games on my old Dell laptop PC. BBC World was my only saviour – oh, and the washroom on the Friday. Looking back on it, I have NO IDEA HOW I got through it in once mental piece. Fortunately I DID start going into with the new colleague who arrived a week after me. The very act of going INTO town was something I was really afraid of doing myself. It took me quite a few weeks before I was able to do it, and the first time I went on a 'solo' run into town was when my colleague was doing something else. Quickly I discovered that “going into town” only meant getting the taxi from HERE to THERE, doing the shopping, drinking some coffee, eating a bit of cake and returning in another taxi from THERE to HERE. And that pretty much the only 'weekend entertainment' likely was checking out the next “undiscovered” shopping mall.
Ohh, but WHAT A JOY it was that first time I got online! Now bearing in mind that I will be out of here on the 20th February, I have to time my next payment so as to leave me with as little downtime as possible just before I leave here. Tomorrow is the 19th so if I go and pay then, it will give me internet access to, eventually, the 18th February. That should do it.
But that is tomorrow. Today I have to get through net-less. Seven more hours to go ….
Seven More Shopping Days to ....
Thursday 17th December 2009
Yes indeed! There really ARE only seven shopping days to go ….. but I don't mean to Christmas because there IS no Christmas here of course.
What I mean is something FAR BETTER for me. And that is that there are only about seven weekends to go until my Final Exit from this country.
Well, OK OK so maybe a few more and possible even a few less. But hey – I was trying to think up yet another cool headline for this blog entry and THAT was what I came up with!
Anyway, YES indeed! I HAVE now put in my request for so-called Terminal Leave. This means that I will put as many possible of my remaining holiday days on the end of my contract which will enable me to depart ahead of my scheduled Contract End Date. That, as you might recall, was originally to be 13th March. However, our semester ends on 10th February and the semester after THAT begins on 27th February. I did not want to be left with a fiddly little two weeks of work in March when all I would be thinking of is the small number of days left. Wouldn't have made ANY sense to even GO back for the start of the new semester. End of semester means end of ME here in Saudi Arabia!
Having counted back from my 13th March contract end date, I saw that it was possible to set my leaving date on 18th February at the earliest. Well, THAT is, I think, a Thursday. Although that is the start of the weekend here, it is, of course, NOT that back in Europe and the UK. Would make little sense to arrive back in mid-week because this would make difficulties for anyone who would be picking me up from the airport on arrival. MUCH better, I thought, to be on the plane on the Saturday the 20th which would mean arrival on the Sunday.
However, I was talking with our Head of Department and one of my colleagues about the actual procedure of finishing here and leaving the country and finally flying out. I had assumed that I would be able to make my final farewell from Bahrain Airport which is a FAR nicer way to go than the rubbishy airport closer to here in Dammam. My memories of THAT place are, of course, that first long night when I was abandoned and had to wait until the early hours to be picked up and brought here to where I am now. Did NOT want to ever see it AGAIN!
But nothing here is ever so simple or straightforward. Oh, the weeks to come are going to be testing times, and even up to the VERY LAST MINUTE I will not be able to rest easy it seems.
Why is that? Well, as you may know, Saudi Arabia is a great lover of bureaucracy and there are forms to fill in whenever there is some kind of need. I don't mind THAT as I have been through such paper-runs before in Poland many times. But what I DO object to is what I was told about what happens with my passport.
I have NO CHOICE which airport I can fly out from. It MUST be from Dammam airport. And when will I receive my passport? A few days before as when I went on holiday? NOT A BIT OF IT! I will, so I am told, receive my passport in my hand AT THE AIRPORT by someone from here. I will have met this person who is to “deliver” me my passport a few days beforehand here in the compound.
Now, in some ways I don't care HOW I get out of here just so long as it happens. But my pessimistic side is rearing its ugly head up now EVEN AS WE SPEAK! Since they were unable to MEET me that very first time, HOW are they going to be together enough and organised enough to be at the airport at the time they should be? And HOW do I know that they will not be delayed and that I will miss my flight? And HOW do I know that they will have done the Exit Visa correctly? You may remember what I said about them screwing that up for one of my other colleagues before the summer.
Amazingly, and this must be the first positive thing the HoD has ever said about these people, our HoD said, “Oh, they WILL be there!”. HOW is he so sure about this? Every other thing here they do he has only bad comment on. But THIS he is CONFIDENT of??
Well, if he IS optimistic they will be there, then that MUST be a good sign. But I'll believe it when I see it.
And here's another thing (and THIS is a good thing I think). He says that THEY take you TO the airport! Not bad! No need for taxis (though I'd much prefer to be taking one over the Causeway to Bahrain). But THAT is ANOTHER thing I doubt them to do. We will see.
Ah, but hold on. I am talking about Departure Day as if it is tomorrow. Ohh, there is MUCH to do before then.
Everyone who leaves here has certain procedures they must go through. Things must be signed off, handed back, checked out, gone through etc. etc. and there is a TIMETABLE of WHAT you must do and WHEN you must do it. Roughly it goes 7 weeks from departure, 3 weeks from departure, 2 weeks, 1 week, a few days, one day. Against each of these there is a bullet-point list of what you must do, who you must see and where you must go. Oh, and what you must give to who and where they are. Oh, and not forgetting another thing. You have to get all these people to SIGN to say that you are that ONE MORE STEP towards completing your Exit Plan.
Makes you wonder. Why go through all this when it is easier to stay here and just go on holiday when you can?
Whooaahhh!! Hold that thought! NO WAY!! Nah, you didn't think I was serious, did you? About STAYING? You got to be JOKING! I am looking forward to being out of here like the man out of solitary confinement. Like the butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Like the chick from its eggshell. Like the sun from out behind a big raincloud. Like the end of a very long constipation. Like .... like …. like ….
The only slight concern I have is the possible gap between finishing work here and starting my next job wherever that may be (though I have ideas already and am getting the CV off even as we speak!). But actually I don't think I will have much down time from work – at the most I think only a few months. The way I see it is this: finish here end February and back to the UK, a brief time there then a WELL-DESERVED holiday for a month, back end of April for Easter holiday time in England, May will probably be free, summer holiday work in any or all of June/July/August. I will spend some of my free time in London, but my preference is to spend that time back in Poland as that is where I feel best and it is now where all my things are. And the house and garden are there. And the peace and quiet too. Yes, there ARE family 'connections' still in the UK but there are troubles too and I don't want any more than is necessary of THOSE. This may not please some people, but I don't aim to be ONCE AGAIN tied to London whatever might suit THEM. No need for more details here.
It will be the first time in very many years I am to see my garden in the spring and summer periods. And time to do something in it!
The count, as I speak, is eight weeks of teaching left PLUS the ten days of February between the 10th and 20th which will be long and tedious but I will not care one bit!
I'm gonna be RIDIN' THAT FREEDOM TRAIN!
Yes indeed! There really ARE only seven shopping days to go ….. but I don't mean to Christmas because there IS no Christmas here of course.
What I mean is something FAR BETTER for me. And that is that there are only about seven weekends to go until my Final Exit from this country.
Well, OK OK so maybe a few more and possible even a few less. But hey – I was trying to think up yet another cool headline for this blog entry and THAT was what I came up with!
Anyway, YES indeed! I HAVE now put in my request for so-called Terminal Leave. This means that I will put as many possible of my remaining holiday days on the end of my contract which will enable me to depart ahead of my scheduled Contract End Date. That, as you might recall, was originally to be 13th March. However, our semester ends on 10th February and the semester after THAT begins on 27th February. I did not want to be left with a fiddly little two weeks of work in March when all I would be thinking of is the small number of days left. Wouldn't have made ANY sense to even GO back for the start of the new semester. End of semester means end of ME here in Saudi Arabia!
Having counted back from my 13th March contract end date, I saw that it was possible to set my leaving date on 18th February at the earliest. Well, THAT is, I think, a Thursday. Although that is the start of the weekend here, it is, of course, NOT that back in Europe and the UK. Would make little sense to arrive back in mid-week because this would make difficulties for anyone who would be picking me up from the airport on arrival. MUCH better, I thought, to be on the plane on the Saturday the 20th which would mean arrival on the Sunday.
However, I was talking with our Head of Department and one of my colleagues about the actual procedure of finishing here and leaving the country and finally flying out. I had assumed that I would be able to make my final farewell from Bahrain Airport which is a FAR nicer way to go than the rubbishy airport closer to here in Dammam. My memories of THAT place are, of course, that first long night when I was abandoned and had to wait until the early hours to be picked up and brought here to where I am now. Did NOT want to ever see it AGAIN!
But nothing here is ever so simple or straightforward. Oh, the weeks to come are going to be testing times, and even up to the VERY LAST MINUTE I will not be able to rest easy it seems.
Why is that? Well, as you may know, Saudi Arabia is a great lover of bureaucracy and there are forms to fill in whenever there is some kind of need. I don't mind THAT as I have been through such paper-runs before in Poland many times. But what I DO object to is what I was told about what happens with my passport.
I have NO CHOICE which airport I can fly out from. It MUST be from Dammam airport. And when will I receive my passport? A few days before as when I went on holiday? NOT A BIT OF IT! I will, so I am told, receive my passport in my hand AT THE AIRPORT by someone from here. I will have met this person who is to “deliver” me my passport a few days beforehand here in the compound.
Now, in some ways I don't care HOW I get out of here just so long as it happens. But my pessimistic side is rearing its ugly head up now EVEN AS WE SPEAK! Since they were unable to MEET me that very first time, HOW are they going to be together enough and organised enough to be at the airport at the time they should be? And HOW do I know that they will not be delayed and that I will miss my flight? And HOW do I know that they will have done the Exit Visa correctly? You may remember what I said about them screwing that up for one of my other colleagues before the summer.
Amazingly, and this must be the first positive thing the HoD has ever said about these people, our HoD said, “Oh, they WILL be there!”. HOW is he so sure about this? Every other thing here they do he has only bad comment on. But THIS he is CONFIDENT of??
Well, if he IS optimistic they will be there, then that MUST be a good sign. But I'll believe it when I see it.
And here's another thing (and THIS is a good thing I think). He says that THEY take you TO the airport! Not bad! No need for taxis (though I'd much prefer to be taking one over the Causeway to Bahrain). But THAT is ANOTHER thing I doubt them to do. We will see.
Ah, but hold on. I am talking about Departure Day as if it is tomorrow. Ohh, there is MUCH to do before then.
Everyone who leaves here has certain procedures they must go through. Things must be signed off, handed back, checked out, gone through etc. etc. and there is a TIMETABLE of WHAT you must do and WHEN you must do it. Roughly it goes 7 weeks from departure, 3 weeks from departure, 2 weeks, 1 week, a few days, one day. Against each of these there is a bullet-point list of what you must do, who you must see and where you must go. Oh, and what you must give to who and where they are. Oh, and not forgetting another thing. You have to get all these people to SIGN to say that you are that ONE MORE STEP towards completing your Exit Plan.
Makes you wonder. Why go through all this when it is easier to stay here and just go on holiday when you can?
Whooaahhh!! Hold that thought! NO WAY!! Nah, you didn't think I was serious, did you? About STAYING? You got to be JOKING! I am looking forward to being out of here like the man out of solitary confinement. Like the butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Like the chick from its eggshell. Like the sun from out behind a big raincloud. Like the end of a very long constipation. Like .... like …. like ….
The only slight concern I have is the possible gap between finishing work here and starting my next job wherever that may be (though I have ideas already and am getting the CV off even as we speak!). But actually I don't think I will have much down time from work – at the most I think only a few months. The way I see it is this: finish here end February and back to the UK, a brief time there then a WELL-DESERVED holiday for a month, back end of April for Easter holiday time in England, May will probably be free, summer holiday work in any or all of June/July/August. I will spend some of my free time in London, but my preference is to spend that time back in Poland as that is where I feel best and it is now where all my things are. And the house and garden are there. And the peace and quiet too. Yes, there ARE family 'connections' still in the UK but there are troubles too and I don't want any more than is necessary of THOSE. This may not please some people, but I don't aim to be ONCE AGAIN tied to London whatever might suit THEM. No need for more details here.
It will be the first time in very many years I am to see my garden in the spring and summer periods. And time to do something in it!
The count, as I speak, is eight weeks of teaching left PLUS the ten days of February between the 10th and 20th which will be long and tedious but I will not care one bit!
I'm gonna be RIDIN' THAT FREEDOM TRAIN!
Monday, 14 December 2009
FINALLY the RAIN comes back to Saudi Arabia!
Monday 14th December 2009
Well it has finally come to an end.
No no – nothing as dramatic as you are thinking. And nothing directly affecting me.
What I am talking about is something that many of you out there are being inundated with right now. And that is RAIN!
Now, I'm sure you all are wishing hard that you could send you rain clouds to me and that I, in return, will give you back some blue skies and sunshine. Well, I'd love to of course though I haven't yet achieved God status.
But the first part of that deal HAS been done it seems. On the night of 5th to 6th December 2009, and for the first time in nearly EIGHT MONTHS (since about mid-April), the rain came to Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
YES!! RAIN!! REAL RAIN fell in the night!!
You can imagine the feeling when I left the apartment block building here. I stepped outside and there it was EVERYWHERE. Well, I mean that the roads and pavement areas were WET. And there were drops of rain coming from the sky too.
Doesn't sound much, does it? But here it's a Great Event. When rain falls here, the Saudis want to go outside. They want to see it, to smell it. And they REALLY like it! Why? Well, a few years ago I had some Saudi students when I was working in Bournemouth in England. I asked them what they liked about England. “The rain”, they replied. This really took me back – you ask any other nationality and they will say how much they hate the rain and how it does nothing BUT rain in England. So I asked them why they liked this. “Well,” they said, “it rains so little in our country and it is so dry. Rain is something different and something nice to see”.
So there you are. Don't tell me that everyone and everywhere the instance of rain is treated like …. well, like something you might scrape off your shoe!
However, there is another change here. Now, for ME it is AGAIN a very welcome change. For me, we have, at LAST, some normal weather to get us through the day. A bit of sun, some rain, cool mornings and sunny and warm afternoons and then cooler evenings. The kind of weather I am used to and the kind I like. That is compared to HERE where it is just sunny and hot from dawn to dusk.
This is now the period they call, “winter”. What do YOU think of when winter comes to mind? Depends where you are of course, but you will probably say things like Lots Of Rain, Cold Winds, Snow And Ice, Woolly Hat Time, Ski Weather etc. etc. and you would be right where YOU are. Not here. The winter season here means that nights can drop to, at times, between zero celsius (very rarely) and 10 celsius. In the mornings when I'm up and out for lessons (about 7am), the temperature is, I suppose, around 10 celsius or maybe a little below. In the middle of the day the temperature is up to about 20 celsius. The rain comes in the night mostly, and it leaves many roads with huge puddles of water where drainage is poor or non-existent. I have seen pictures of underpasses on main roads which are COMPLETELY FLOODED OUT. And water on main roads often has nowhere to go, though the problem there is mainly with smaller side roads. But going into town last week the taxi had to slow down to a crawl where it had to go through a part of the road at the side where the water had not drained away and where it came up to half-tyres height.
Nice to see that they here also have trouble in their own “extreme weather” situations! Come back UK town councils – all is forgiven!!
Well I can tell you that this rain continued all through the week raining every day a little. At nights there were always thunderstorms far away and you could see lightning flashes in the distance. But I didn't hear any thunder at night – not here anyway.
Well, to the Saudis this is cold weather as I said. Now you see them going round in sweaters or jackets and some of them even have those woolly hats! YES! The kind you wear when you go out in the snow or on those cold mornings where YOU live. And yet it is only about 10 celsius! Do YOU wear a woolly hat at such a temperature? I very much doubt it!
I am enjoying it a lot. For me it is “payback time” for all those unbearable days in the summer where I suffered under that impossible sun and where it was normal for them. And partly just for fun (but also because the air in the classroom is stale in the mornings when I get there), I STILL insist on putting on the air conditioning system. But I do turn the temperature up a little ….. just a little.
But …. it is NOT what you would call COLD here!! Not by ANY stretch of the imagination!
Well it has finally come to an end.
No no – nothing as dramatic as you are thinking. And nothing directly affecting me.
What I am talking about is something that many of you out there are being inundated with right now. And that is RAIN!
Now, I'm sure you all are wishing hard that you could send you rain clouds to me and that I, in return, will give you back some blue skies and sunshine. Well, I'd love to of course though I haven't yet achieved God status.
But the first part of that deal HAS been done it seems. On the night of 5th to 6th December 2009, and for the first time in nearly EIGHT MONTHS (since about mid-April), the rain came to Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
YES!! RAIN!! REAL RAIN fell in the night!!
You can imagine the feeling when I left the apartment block building here. I stepped outside and there it was EVERYWHERE. Well, I mean that the roads and pavement areas were WET. And there were drops of rain coming from the sky too.
Doesn't sound much, does it? But here it's a Great Event. When rain falls here, the Saudis want to go outside. They want to see it, to smell it. And they REALLY like it! Why? Well, a few years ago I had some Saudi students when I was working in Bournemouth in England. I asked them what they liked about England. “The rain”, they replied. This really took me back – you ask any other nationality and they will say how much they hate the rain and how it does nothing BUT rain in England. So I asked them why they liked this. “Well,” they said, “it rains so little in our country and it is so dry. Rain is something different and something nice to see”.
So there you are. Don't tell me that everyone and everywhere the instance of rain is treated like …. well, like something you might scrape off your shoe!
However, there is another change here. Now, for ME it is AGAIN a very welcome change. For me, we have, at LAST, some normal weather to get us through the day. A bit of sun, some rain, cool mornings and sunny and warm afternoons and then cooler evenings. The kind of weather I am used to and the kind I like. That is compared to HERE where it is just sunny and hot from dawn to dusk.
This is now the period they call, “winter”. What do YOU think of when winter comes to mind? Depends where you are of course, but you will probably say things like Lots Of Rain, Cold Winds, Snow And Ice, Woolly Hat Time, Ski Weather etc. etc. and you would be right where YOU are. Not here. The winter season here means that nights can drop to, at times, between zero celsius (very rarely) and 10 celsius. In the mornings when I'm up and out for lessons (about 7am), the temperature is, I suppose, around 10 celsius or maybe a little below. In the middle of the day the temperature is up to about 20 celsius. The rain comes in the night mostly, and it leaves many roads with huge puddles of water where drainage is poor or non-existent. I have seen pictures of underpasses on main roads which are COMPLETELY FLOODED OUT. And water on main roads often has nowhere to go, though the problem there is mainly with smaller side roads. But going into town last week the taxi had to slow down to a crawl where it had to go through a part of the road at the side where the water had not drained away and where it came up to half-tyres height.
Nice to see that they here also have trouble in their own “extreme weather” situations! Come back UK town councils – all is forgiven!!
Well I can tell you that this rain continued all through the week raining every day a little. At nights there were always thunderstorms far away and you could see lightning flashes in the distance. But I didn't hear any thunder at night – not here anyway.
Well, to the Saudis this is cold weather as I said. Now you see them going round in sweaters or jackets and some of them even have those woolly hats! YES! The kind you wear when you go out in the snow or on those cold mornings where YOU live. And yet it is only about 10 celsius! Do YOU wear a woolly hat at such a temperature? I very much doubt it!
I am enjoying it a lot. For me it is “payback time” for all those unbearable days in the summer where I suffered under that impossible sun and where it was normal for them. And partly just for fun (but also because the air in the classroom is stale in the mornings when I get there), I STILL insist on putting on the air conditioning system. But I do turn the temperature up a little ….. just a little.
But …. it is NOT what you would call COLD here!! Not by ANY stretch of the imagination!
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Week 1 Boredom, Week 2 INSOMNIA!
Wednesday 9th December 2009
Hmm I'm falling behind with all this stuff just now. But I have a a pretty good excuse, though not one I like. What is it? Yep, I've been ill again.
Hang on. Wasn't that the subject of the blog LAST time? Well, yes, much of it was that though not all. And maybe you mean the blog before the last one. But in any case, yes, once again in this country I have succumbed to the dreaded 'lurgy' (as we say).
Last time I wrote, I was on the verge of two weeks of holiday 'freedom' as the students were to be off for their Hajj break. And indeed they were and indeed I DID have those two weeks. But they were generally pretty awful in a couple of ways.
Week 1 was quite simply DULL and BORING! Nothing else to say really – just a totally BALL-ACHINGLY tedious seven days of my life out here. Well, you say, isn't it ALL like that? Ohhh, no no – not like THAT was. I quite simply had nothing to do. During the teaching week this is only the case in evenings and weekends. But imagine THIS scenario – no teaching, nobody else around, nowhere to go, STILL too warm to go out far. AND an internet connection that was as temperamentally off as it had ever been in the year to date. Why so? Well I was being disconnected extremely often. In Week 2 this became insane and I found that after only a logon period of 20-30 minutes, I was booted off and then I had to disconnect and reconnect my modem, restart the PC, disconnect and reconnect modem AGAIN, restart PC AGAIN and then after a THIRD time of restarting the PC the connection would be back. If I was lucky. I might well have to wait till later in the day.
The reasons for all THAT trouble are still unclear. I NEVER know if the trouble is due to my PC, my modem, the physical interruption of the signal from Mobile to my PC, the transmit/receive mast down the road malfunctioning, some other Mobile systems fault (which HAS happened before!), or just being in the WRONG TIME in the WRONG PLACE on the WRONG FUCKIN DAY. And with the WRONG WIND BLOWING!!!
What I THINK it was is something I installed which now I have taken off the computer. And that thing is called a 'firewall' program. Yes, Windows Vista DOES have its own basic firewall program which now I am back to using. But it doesn't keep out all that it should and mostly it keeps check ONLY on the programs you are running and which of THOSE need access to the internet. Does it keep out potential intruders who are out there trying to break in? I don't think it does much of that, no. However, in trying to make my system better I might have closed down access 'holes' which didn't WANT to be closed down. Well, if you've ever tried to use a firewall program before, you CAN find it pretty daunting with all the terminology it throws up and what it asks you about and what you should and shouldn't be blocking. The one I had (Agnitum Outpost) is constantly asking you questions about the programs you are running and about if you want to allow certain types of access or not. But it is FAR from being user-friendly. I am a fairly savvy computer user but I know very little about TCP or UDP or that sort of thing. That was one good thing about the BitDefender Firewall package until it got faulty and refused to start (a fault which BitDefender STILL can't fix properly and I will NOT be renewing my subscription to their services!).
So having taken off that Outpost firewall, normalcy has been restored. Well, except for the fact that, according to the Mobily boys, I used up all my 5GB of allowed upload/download allocation in under TWO WEEKS!!?? I REALLY don't think their counter can count at all, but there is little I can do about that even if I DID have my own counter. Their counter is, unfortunately, the one that decides how much you have used. And that is THAT whether they are right or wrong or whatever.
Ohh I sure HOPE I can get back to normal straightforward internet access soon! This internet connection has been a constant source of frustration for most of the year. And yet the choice of how we connect to the web is so limited and support so lacking.
So that was one thing that REALLY had me tearing out my hair during most of the first week and much of the second week too. There is NOTHING more frustrating than being denied my internet. Isolation here is bad enough, so when my only connection with the outside world is REMOVED, then it is really rather stressful. Without internet access, I would have no life at all. And THAT statement in itself is rather a sad one! Sad but all too true.
OK, enough of the sick web. Now onto sick ME! And yes indeed I really was NOT at ALL a well man. I am talking about Week 2 of the holiday now. And it was something new. Yes, AGAIN, some new affliction has come to me out here in the desert. For one thing I had quite a bad cold which started early in the week round about Sunday onwards for most of the time. A fairly standard cold I guess – the usual thing – minor coughs, LOTS of sneezing and LOADS of feeling really rather shitty.
Well, if THAT wasn't enough then there was a new thing – INSOMNIA. There are odd nights here and there where we all find we have trouble sleeping. I have had these too. However, imagine this happening to you for what was five or six nights in succession. Every night you go to bed at normal time. You DO feel tired. You do the normal bedtime things. You get into bed and lie down and close your eyes as normal. You just lie there ….. and lie there ….. and lie there …. AND LIE THERE MORE! Much time is passing here and you try lying on one side, then on the other side. These things normally work but in THIS night they do not. You quite simply do NOT FEEL TIRED and you really DO NOT WANT to fall asleep. Yes, your eyes are closed. But what you cannot do is stop your brain from working madly and things are running round inside your head. You cannot stop them, and they are mostly the most innocuous of things – in my case it was things like songs in my head not wanting to go away, thoughts of my computer football management game and what strategies I was going to try, things I had seen on the TV news like, of all things, the trial in Germany of John Demjanjuk, the alleged Nazi death camp prison guard. And probably other such minor things that SHOULD NEVER keep anyone up, and certainly NOT for half the night. And when I say “half the night”, I really DO MEAN THAT for it was always at about 2am or even 3am that I could finally get some sleep.
So what did I do? Did I just lie there? No I did not. I always DID get up in the end after such a long period of lying there. Then I would go to the fridge, get a milk drink, maybe have some bananas, go do stuff on the computer in the HOPE that actually DOING SOMETHING would bring on enough tiredness to finally put me out properly. But it never did and in the end it was only looking at the clock that drove me back into bed for Try #2 of sleep.
The procedure continued ALL that week. The cycle was basically that the morning after this non-sleep I would wake up in mid-morning but not actually GET UP till early afternoon. Having got up, I would feel truly like a man who had not slept. And you know how that feels? Feels like you have something there between your eyes and the Real World you see. Makes it look like a dream. And you can only move very slowly. And things are heavier than normal. And many tasks are much too difficult. And you are INCAPABLE of any kind of thinking or conversation because your brain quite simply is NOT with you. And then ANOTHER NIGHT approaches and you fear it will happen AGAIN which it indeed does and then the next day is as the previous day was.
WHAT A FEELING!
Question is this: not just WHY did it happen but what made it start and what triggered it all off? Why would some weeks of holiday make me an insomniac? What was I doing that was different? What was I EATING that was different?
And THIS is the thing – the answer was …. I wasn't doing much different at ALL.
I can only say this. If you ask what was the big difference these two weeks it is that I was INDOORS inside an AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM almost ALL the time. Why should that matter, you ask. Isn't that the most appropriate environment for conditions such as those I live in? Well, yes, in general it IS the ONLY way you can live out here. Without aircon, we would surely all overheat and our lives would be a complete misery in the 50-degree heat of the desert summer. I am grateful for THAT side of it. But my normal day does NOT involve me staying for SUCH LONG PERIODS in one air-conditioned place. I come and go, I move about between such places. I leave my room in the mornings and I return at lunchtimes (briefly) and then again in mid-afternoon. The classrooms too all have aircon, but again there are frequent break times and we move in and out of these places.
So am I saying that I attribute my sicknesses this week to the AIR-CONDITIONING??
I am saying EXACTLY THAT, yes.
It is a well-known fact that many people have an allergy to air-conditioning. And also that inside an aircon room, it is such an artificial environment because the air you are “forced” to breathe is NOT fresh air but AIR-CONDITIONED AIR! Your air is cooled or heated by the machine,, and the thermostat in your room determines how it is delivered to you. Well, the only thing I change on MY thermostat is the slider which I push UP for warmer and push DOWN for a cooler room. And I DO keep it on all the time day AND night. If you turn it off then you quickly notice how the temperature in your room increases AND how stale the air becomes and how breathing becomes an effort.
Another thing about airconditioning – well TWO things actually is that the air is SHARED. YES! You can often smell other people's cooking smells (which is nice!), but also you get the exhaled air of, probably, EVERYONE else in your building. And what does THAT contain? ANY NUMBER of different kinds of germs and bacteria of all kinds that you care to name. Well, doesn't the airconditioning process kill those germs? No, I really don't think it DOES at ALL!
Therefore if there are any sneezers or coughers around you or if someone else has flu or a cold and you are in your room for longer than you should be, then it is, in my opinion, MORE than likely that YOU TOO will go down in the same way!
Of course I have no scientific knowledge to back this up and many people will claim what I say to be completely fallacy. OK, you take whatever point of view you wish! But I'll tell you something – in future I'll take the cooling breeze of a nice electric FAN to cool ME down, thank you very much. You can KEEP your airconditioning!!
Speaking of aircon, I woke up last Thursday to no aircon and no electricity at all. Ohh, I thought, ANOTHER building electricity breakdown. But, on going downstairs to find out more, there was a notice on the outside that gave us info on the electrical power supply maintenance work that they were doing all over the compound. Of course, they hadn't USEFULLY informed us the previous day that they were to do this and so fridges defrosted everywhere. My fridge doesn't have much frozen stuff in it and all I lost was about half a bottle of milk that went off.
Oh, and ANOTHER first a few days before THAT. Early-ish morning it was and I was lying nicely there in my bed. Suddenly the sound of bells – alarm bells. Now, when you're lying there and you hear such a thing, you REALLY don't QUITE know what you're hearing at first ESPECIALLY when you've never heard the building's fire alarm before. First I thought it was some kind of bell in my room …. no, my phone wasn't ringing. Then I thought, ah, maybe it IS outside the room but it doesn't sound loud enough ….. better go out and check …. YES, it WAS the fire alarm! Well, I'll be damned! Sure was the QUIETEST fire alarm bell I've ever heard in my LIFE.
Nobody else seemed to be rushing out but I figured I'd better. Saw some others from my floor heading out too and we all, of course, went to the stairs and not to the lift as that is what every sound person knows you must not do. Down the stairs and out the building and …. well I couldn't help noticing the Filipino guy in fireman's uniform GET INTO THE LIFT to go up!! Ha ha HAAA!! Some fire fighter HE would turn out to be!!!
Anyway, it was all over soon as the fire bell went off and we all went back in. This was, As I recall, a few days before the power outage.
A few days AFTER the Maintenance Day had passed, there was AGAIN a Lights Out moment one night – must've been not so late. Again then the aircon was off and all lights too. But this time there was a strange quietness and stillness about the place. Well, all except for the guys who live just down the corridor who were making a lot of noise about it all. I didn't understand that – wasn't this just another maintenance thing?
Apparently not. Seems it was the WHOLE of the Eastern Province that was out of power for about half an hour that night. And the cause? Well, I'm not sure but someone said something about an explosion of some kind in a generator somewhere. Not the 'terror kind' – just the accidental kind …. probably due to …. yes you've guessed it – LACK OF MAINTENANCE!!
An Accident Waiting To Happen? Will these people never learn?
Hmm I'm falling behind with all this stuff just now. But I have a a pretty good excuse, though not one I like. What is it? Yep, I've been ill again.
Hang on. Wasn't that the subject of the blog LAST time? Well, yes, much of it was that though not all. And maybe you mean the blog before the last one. But in any case, yes, once again in this country I have succumbed to the dreaded 'lurgy' (as we say).
Last time I wrote, I was on the verge of two weeks of holiday 'freedom' as the students were to be off for their Hajj break. And indeed they were and indeed I DID have those two weeks. But they were generally pretty awful in a couple of ways.
Week 1 was quite simply DULL and BORING! Nothing else to say really – just a totally BALL-ACHINGLY tedious seven days of my life out here. Well, you say, isn't it ALL like that? Ohhh, no no – not like THAT was. I quite simply had nothing to do. During the teaching week this is only the case in evenings and weekends. But imagine THIS scenario – no teaching, nobody else around, nowhere to go, STILL too warm to go out far. AND an internet connection that was as temperamentally off as it had ever been in the year to date. Why so? Well I was being disconnected extremely often. In Week 2 this became insane and I found that after only a logon period of 20-30 minutes, I was booted off and then I had to disconnect and reconnect my modem, restart the PC, disconnect and reconnect modem AGAIN, restart PC AGAIN and then after a THIRD time of restarting the PC the connection would be back. If I was lucky. I might well have to wait till later in the day.
The reasons for all THAT trouble are still unclear. I NEVER know if the trouble is due to my PC, my modem, the physical interruption of the signal from Mobile to my PC, the transmit/receive mast down the road malfunctioning, some other Mobile systems fault (which HAS happened before!), or just being in the WRONG TIME in the WRONG PLACE on the WRONG FUCKIN DAY. And with the WRONG WIND BLOWING!!!
What I THINK it was is something I installed which now I have taken off the computer. And that thing is called a 'firewall' program. Yes, Windows Vista DOES have its own basic firewall program which now I am back to using. But it doesn't keep out all that it should and mostly it keeps check ONLY on the programs you are running and which of THOSE need access to the internet. Does it keep out potential intruders who are out there trying to break in? I don't think it does much of that, no. However, in trying to make my system better I might have closed down access 'holes' which didn't WANT to be closed down. Well, if you've ever tried to use a firewall program before, you CAN find it pretty daunting with all the terminology it throws up and what it asks you about and what you should and shouldn't be blocking. The one I had (Agnitum Outpost) is constantly asking you questions about the programs you are running and about if you want to allow certain types of access or not. But it is FAR from being user-friendly. I am a fairly savvy computer user but I know very little about TCP or UDP or that sort of thing. That was one good thing about the BitDefender Firewall package until it got faulty and refused to start (a fault which BitDefender STILL can't fix properly and I will NOT be renewing my subscription to their services!).
So having taken off that Outpost firewall, normalcy has been restored. Well, except for the fact that, according to the Mobily boys, I used up all my 5GB of allowed upload/download allocation in under TWO WEEKS!!?? I REALLY don't think their counter can count at all, but there is little I can do about that even if I DID have my own counter. Their counter is, unfortunately, the one that decides how much you have used. And that is THAT whether they are right or wrong or whatever.
Ohh I sure HOPE I can get back to normal straightforward internet access soon! This internet connection has been a constant source of frustration for most of the year. And yet the choice of how we connect to the web is so limited and support so lacking.
So that was one thing that REALLY had me tearing out my hair during most of the first week and much of the second week too. There is NOTHING more frustrating than being denied my internet. Isolation here is bad enough, so when my only connection with the outside world is REMOVED, then it is really rather stressful. Without internet access, I would have no life at all. And THAT statement in itself is rather a sad one! Sad but all too true.
OK, enough of the sick web. Now onto sick ME! And yes indeed I really was NOT at ALL a well man. I am talking about Week 2 of the holiday now. And it was something new. Yes, AGAIN, some new affliction has come to me out here in the desert. For one thing I had quite a bad cold which started early in the week round about Sunday onwards for most of the time. A fairly standard cold I guess – the usual thing – minor coughs, LOTS of sneezing and LOADS of feeling really rather shitty.
Well, if THAT wasn't enough then there was a new thing – INSOMNIA. There are odd nights here and there where we all find we have trouble sleeping. I have had these too. However, imagine this happening to you for what was five or six nights in succession. Every night you go to bed at normal time. You DO feel tired. You do the normal bedtime things. You get into bed and lie down and close your eyes as normal. You just lie there ….. and lie there ….. and lie there …. AND LIE THERE MORE! Much time is passing here and you try lying on one side, then on the other side. These things normally work but in THIS night they do not. You quite simply do NOT FEEL TIRED and you really DO NOT WANT to fall asleep. Yes, your eyes are closed. But what you cannot do is stop your brain from working madly and things are running round inside your head. You cannot stop them, and they are mostly the most innocuous of things – in my case it was things like songs in my head not wanting to go away, thoughts of my computer football management game and what strategies I was going to try, things I had seen on the TV news like, of all things, the trial in Germany of John Demjanjuk, the alleged Nazi death camp prison guard. And probably other such minor things that SHOULD NEVER keep anyone up, and certainly NOT for half the night. And when I say “half the night”, I really DO MEAN THAT for it was always at about 2am or even 3am that I could finally get some sleep.
So what did I do? Did I just lie there? No I did not. I always DID get up in the end after such a long period of lying there. Then I would go to the fridge, get a milk drink, maybe have some bananas, go do stuff on the computer in the HOPE that actually DOING SOMETHING would bring on enough tiredness to finally put me out properly. But it never did and in the end it was only looking at the clock that drove me back into bed for Try #2 of sleep.
The procedure continued ALL that week. The cycle was basically that the morning after this non-sleep I would wake up in mid-morning but not actually GET UP till early afternoon. Having got up, I would feel truly like a man who had not slept. And you know how that feels? Feels like you have something there between your eyes and the Real World you see. Makes it look like a dream. And you can only move very slowly. And things are heavier than normal. And many tasks are much too difficult. And you are INCAPABLE of any kind of thinking or conversation because your brain quite simply is NOT with you. And then ANOTHER NIGHT approaches and you fear it will happen AGAIN which it indeed does and then the next day is as the previous day was.
WHAT A FEELING!
Question is this: not just WHY did it happen but what made it start and what triggered it all off? Why would some weeks of holiday make me an insomniac? What was I doing that was different? What was I EATING that was different?
And THIS is the thing – the answer was …. I wasn't doing much different at ALL.
I can only say this. If you ask what was the big difference these two weeks it is that I was INDOORS inside an AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM almost ALL the time. Why should that matter, you ask. Isn't that the most appropriate environment for conditions such as those I live in? Well, yes, in general it IS the ONLY way you can live out here. Without aircon, we would surely all overheat and our lives would be a complete misery in the 50-degree heat of the desert summer. I am grateful for THAT side of it. But my normal day does NOT involve me staying for SUCH LONG PERIODS in one air-conditioned place. I come and go, I move about between such places. I leave my room in the mornings and I return at lunchtimes (briefly) and then again in mid-afternoon. The classrooms too all have aircon, but again there are frequent break times and we move in and out of these places.
So am I saying that I attribute my sicknesses this week to the AIR-CONDITIONING??
I am saying EXACTLY THAT, yes.
It is a well-known fact that many people have an allergy to air-conditioning. And also that inside an aircon room, it is such an artificial environment because the air you are “forced” to breathe is NOT fresh air but AIR-CONDITIONED AIR! Your air is cooled or heated by the machine,, and the thermostat in your room determines how it is delivered to you. Well, the only thing I change on MY thermostat is the slider which I push UP for warmer and push DOWN for a cooler room. And I DO keep it on all the time day AND night. If you turn it off then you quickly notice how the temperature in your room increases AND how stale the air becomes and how breathing becomes an effort.
Another thing about airconditioning – well TWO things actually is that the air is SHARED. YES! You can often smell other people's cooking smells (which is nice!), but also you get the exhaled air of, probably, EVERYONE else in your building. And what does THAT contain? ANY NUMBER of different kinds of germs and bacteria of all kinds that you care to name. Well, doesn't the airconditioning process kill those germs? No, I really don't think it DOES at ALL!
Therefore if there are any sneezers or coughers around you or if someone else has flu or a cold and you are in your room for longer than you should be, then it is, in my opinion, MORE than likely that YOU TOO will go down in the same way!
Of course I have no scientific knowledge to back this up and many people will claim what I say to be completely fallacy. OK, you take whatever point of view you wish! But I'll tell you something – in future I'll take the cooling breeze of a nice electric FAN to cool ME down, thank you very much. You can KEEP your airconditioning!!
Speaking of aircon, I woke up last Thursday to no aircon and no electricity at all. Ohh, I thought, ANOTHER building electricity breakdown. But, on going downstairs to find out more, there was a notice on the outside that gave us info on the electrical power supply maintenance work that they were doing all over the compound. Of course, they hadn't USEFULLY informed us the previous day that they were to do this and so fridges defrosted everywhere. My fridge doesn't have much frozen stuff in it and all I lost was about half a bottle of milk that went off.
Oh, and ANOTHER first a few days before THAT. Early-ish morning it was and I was lying nicely there in my bed. Suddenly the sound of bells – alarm bells. Now, when you're lying there and you hear such a thing, you REALLY don't QUITE know what you're hearing at first ESPECIALLY when you've never heard the building's fire alarm before. First I thought it was some kind of bell in my room …. no, my phone wasn't ringing. Then I thought, ah, maybe it IS outside the room but it doesn't sound loud enough ….. better go out and check …. YES, it WAS the fire alarm! Well, I'll be damned! Sure was the QUIETEST fire alarm bell I've ever heard in my LIFE.
Nobody else seemed to be rushing out but I figured I'd better. Saw some others from my floor heading out too and we all, of course, went to the stairs and not to the lift as that is what every sound person knows you must not do. Down the stairs and out the building and …. well I couldn't help noticing the Filipino guy in fireman's uniform GET INTO THE LIFT to go up!! Ha ha HAAA!! Some fire fighter HE would turn out to be!!!
Anyway, it was all over soon as the fire bell went off and we all went back in. This was, As I recall, a few days before the power outage.
A few days AFTER the Maintenance Day had passed, there was AGAIN a Lights Out moment one night – must've been not so late. Again then the aircon was off and all lights too. But this time there was a strange quietness and stillness about the place. Well, all except for the guys who live just down the corridor who were making a lot of noise about it all. I didn't understand that – wasn't this just another maintenance thing?
Apparently not. Seems it was the WHOLE of the Eastern Province that was out of power for about half an hour that night. And the cause? Well, I'm not sure but someone said something about an explosion of some kind in a generator somewhere. Not the 'terror kind' – just the accidental kind …. probably due to …. yes you've guessed it – LACK OF MAINTENANCE!!
An Accident Waiting To Happen? Will these people never learn?
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Saudi Flu or Third Time Unlucky in the Desert
Wednesday 18th November 2009
Well it’s not an internet café setting, and I’m standing up as I type this but this is a new setting and new way of doing my blog entry for today.
So where am I and what the hell am I on about? Well, in fact I’m in my classroom. In front of me sit …. Well, actually there is no-one here at all except me, my bottle of water and the “entertainment pack” that I brought with me today. That comprises one mobile phone plus headset for music or radio, several puzzle books (which are all about ten years old and mostly unused) and one travel writings book (“Long Way Round” – McGregor and Boorman).
I might get onto the book. My mobile phone is nearly out of battery charge. I have started my water (and, by the way, if you’re wondering WHICH variety I drink, it is Nestle PureLife – one of my favourites!). And if standing up and typing is tiring then I will sit down and rest a while before resuming.
Sounds like I’m having a good day? Well, as days go here it isn’t so bad. It is the last day before the two weeks of November holiday which is what they call “Hajj” here. No, I don’t know what the occasion of the holiday is, and I can’t say that I really care. Holiday is what it is here and that is a break from the classroom. Yes, I suppose it will be a boring two weeks of my life here, but after my fortnight of flu bacteria I feel I am in need of a rest.
Yes, sadly you DID read correctly. I HAVE indeed had my third bout of flu here in Saudi Arabia. That makes it three times I have been down with flu in just over eight months. And that’s not all of course. If we are to count all my sick and not-feeling-well days, then it will show 3 x influenza, 1 x migraine headache, 1 x month long ear infection blockage problem and long bouts of tiredness and some amount of insomnia (though that is rare).
Normally I consider myself a fairly bug-free kind of guy. In an average year I might have the flu twice at most. But THREE TIMES? And THAT plus ear plus MIGRAINE??
It really came home to me this last week what a rough time I have had here in terms of health and wellbeing. How many of you out there get ill like I have been in the space of eight months of a normal year? Yes, you might have SOME of the things I mentioned, but certainly NOT all together in one continual spell.
There is no doubt that, for me, Saudi Arabia is a difficult country to live in in many ways. Whereas the work-related ways are well documented in these blog pages, I have not said much about the health ways. Well, generally I feel alright and I don’t feel like I’m dropping off the stage of life just yet of course. But just LOOK at what it IS doing to me!
Not only that, there is the element of exercise, or rather lack of it. Apart from the pacing up and down the classroom floor and the stage I have at the front, I have had little chance of any good walking. Well, you can’t do it when you live in the middle of the desert as I do AND when it is over 50 celsius in the summer months. I think that THIS is what I have missed most of all in living here – the fact that I pretty much HAVE TO stay in and there is no chance of going out to explore my surroundings. REALLY miss that. Not that there’s much to explore out here – unless you enjoy endless boring sand and the occasional camel. Oh, but last week there were two camels walking RIGHT NEXT TO THE ROAD when I went into town for my birthday in the taxi. A birthday surprise from the desert you could say! Hmm …. I’ve never quite seen camels up THAT close before. BIG, aren’t they?
Anyway, I digress a little as always. But hey, why NOT? Whose blog IS THIS anyway! If I wanna ramble and pontificate then what better place to do it?
Back I go then to the main theme of these last two weeks which is my flu strike-down. And WHAT a flu it was! I would describe it as a “whispering death” type of flu. It came on me very slowly and gradually in week 1 and by the start of week 2 it was a fully blown blow-yer-head-off killer of a flu which, at its height, had me self-confined in my room for four days (this included last weekend).
How did it start? Well we must go back to the start of the week beginning Saturday 7th November. It started being rather more difficult to get up in the morning, which I simply attributed to tiredness at the end of a very long period of teaching. Well, I thought, no matter because the holiday is only in a few weeks.
Ah, but it DID matter. As that week wore on, I grew steadily more exhausted both DURING the day and in the afternoons. Why could this be, I thought. It is not holiday time yet. Well, my week grew worse and worse. You know when something is up when your usually sharp-witted self in class cannot cope with student questions and when break time is always too short. Oh, AND because my head was becoming increasingly “cloudy” and somewhat dizzy. Well, maybe not dizzy but certainly there was a big slowdown going on up there. Kind of like a brain cell strike was spreading and growing. The more the week went on, I felt tired, REALLY unable and could NOT keep the day going.
But get this – there were few of the more traditional flu symptoms. I was eating normally, did not notice any temperature increase and I did not have what you would call the “muscle aches” of real flu. Instead I had extreme tiredness, a strange of hazy, dizzy feeling in my head which made any kind of thinking a tortuous process. I was reduced to the brain capacity of …. well, a old man approaching ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE!
No no don't worry – I'm not succumbing to THAT. At least not YET, and I'm sure I have many more good years of full brain power to come yet. But the feeling was that any kind of thinking took an awful lot of effort and access to certain parts of my brain were restricted or blocked.
I was not at all well. The worst day of course was Wednesday when, on waking up, I felt really bad but thought that since it WAS Wednesday I would just get through the day and then have the weekend to recover. A BIG mistake! Yes, I went in to class. But as lessons passed by (and there were only four of them on this morning), I felt worse and worse and WORSE.
By the end of Lesson 3 I knew that was it for the day and that I had to go home. It was break time and out I went to the communal area and fell into a chair. I was finished but I had to do something. So just before Lesson 4 I went to the classroom of my colleague and said to him that I was feeling bad and that I was finished for the day and that I was simply not able to do my classes after lunch. Yes, I STILL had three more to come that day!
Well, I did say I would see Lesson 4 through and that afterwards I was going home. And that's what I did. Oh, but how SLOWLY I was moving and how bad did I feel! My weekend had started early but not in the way I would have liked. Went home and, I think, straight to bed.
Now, what I haven't mentioned so far is that YES I DID go to the doctor …. at the START of the week on Sunday. It was the early stages of my flu. I already had the extreme tiredness feeling and knew I had to do something at that early stage. So over I went after my lessons and after I had got changed, I wandered over to the so-called Employee Health Center at the time they said I should go.
Procedure over there always seems the same. You come in and state your problem making sure not to tell the nurses much about it since they don't pass this on to the doctor anyway. Then into the Waiting Area which is, of course, a Male Waiting Area because the Female Waiting Area is behind a screen. You can see the ladies as you come in but you go off to the right to your Male Waiting Area while they are segregated in theirs. You can hear them talking, and if you wanted you could always peer through the cracks between barriers to see them. But NOT sit with them and certainly not talk with them over the partition. Ooofff – men and women MIXING?? Not here mate!
Now, the first thing you ALWAYS have to do is go have your temperature and blood pressure taken. Absolutely ALWAYS! And WHATEVER you go there for! Then you go back and sit in the segregated Waiting Area and wait more for the doctor to be ready. Then you are called and you follow the nurse to his room. Inside there he is sitting there doing …. something with either your medical records or somebody else's or both. Down you sit and wait till he looks as though he is ready. But you never quite know.
He looks at you …. well, I should rather say he looks THROUGH YOU with the strange eyes that he has and you don't know if he is waiting for you to talk or not. There is no word from the nurse on why you are there so any info you gave to her or any or the other nurses is useless!
OK, now time for you to talk and so you tell him what's up. I don't know, but I so often feel that these doctors aren't the least bit interested in your description of your troubles. Anyway, I told him of my symptoms and also I mentioned my migraine as it seemed relevant given it was not so long ago and such these things should be mentioned. “Who told you it was a migraine?”, he wanted to know. I said that nobody actually DID tell me but I supposed it was since it was like no other headache I'd ever had and that I had to have lights off and lie down and felt sick. Not necessarily a migraine, he said. Just a big headache because after all it is because of he climate.
Now, I am not a doctor. But to dismiss a serious thing like THAT was strange. I still consider that it WAS migraine though I have no experience of such things. And yet, from all descriptions of migraine headaches I KNOW that it must have been because of those different aspects I mentioned – dark room, feeling sick and its severity.
So the migraine was discounted. And what next? Well, the usual prescription of pills, though I noted it was on a larger piece of paper than normal. He noted down in my medical file this, also muttering the words, “healthy young man”, as he was doing so. Two of those were and ARE true, but as I know now, I was FAR from being healthy.
His last words were that I had to go home, eat a big meal then and then later eat ANOTHER big meal. And take the pills and I would feel alright in the morning. And if I was not well the next day then I should go to the clinic in the hospital.
Know what? I am more and more convinced that I myself could be a doctor. All you need is a prescription pad and a few choice phrases to give out to all who enter your clinic. Such words should either serve the function of Dismissing Your Patient In The Most Effective Way. Because you are a Busy Man and have many other sick people to attend to.
Yeah! I can do that! White Coat Land here I COME!!
Oh, and I almost forgot. You need a steady supply of antibiotics. No other medicines are required by any patient …. EVER!
I'm sure some enterprising soul out in China has a readymade DIY Doctor's Kit just WAITING for its first orders. ME FIRST!!
Ah, but there's more to add to this. I HAVE become a doctor! YES, didn't you know? Well, I was “christened” as Dr. Wilding by our Course Registrar here who attached a post-it note with my “title” to my newest weekly timetable (or something like that). This has become something of an in-joke between myself and my colleagues. And hey – I like the tag! There is one class of students who address me as either “Teacher” or “Doctor”. It's a lot better than the Wednesday afternoon nursing school ladies who call me only “Mister”.
And much better than being just plain old Teacher David as I was the first semester here with the army boys.
Anyway, back to the flu story just one last time. I DID have Saturday and Sunday off this week. For the four days of Thursday to Sunday of the week just passed I did NOT leave this room at all. My colleague popped his head in every now and then asking if there was anything I needed from the shop. That was very helpful indeed and I am extremely grateful to him, and without that help I would have had to struggle to the shop myself and that would have NOT been possible in the condition I was in. Small tasks became large ones and a tired and heavy feeling had taken over my body in those four days. So a big THANK YOU to him for helping me out.
Now then, I realised I would have to go and get a sick note from our “friendly neighbourhood doctor” as college procedure would require it. So on Sunday evening when I was feeling rather better I made my appointment and went over. OK OK – the usual procedures were gone through. When I was in front of the doctor I said to him that I needed to have a sick note for work. No, he said, he would NOT give me one. Why? Because he cannot give such a thing for days that have passed and can ONLY give it for sick days to come like tomorrow. Well, I said, tomorrow is useless since I will be back to work and I NEED THIS SICK NOTE to give them. No, he repeated, these are the rules.
What an IDIOT! That sitting there and refusing got me really angry. So I said to him, “OK, why, last week, did you just give me your pills and tell me I would be alright in the morning? Because I really was NOT alright! You could and SHOULD have given me the sick note THEN!”.
He had no answer to that and simply said that I should have come back. I was not ABLE to come, I said.
Well, should I drag my sick body from one side of the compound to the other just for the sick note? If I am SICK, it means I CANNOT go out anywhere! And what if my students or colleagues had seen me out there? They would think, “Oh, I see he is HERE but not in class!”.
The definition of Being Ill is that you are NOT able to go out and do your job. So why is it that being ill STILL means you have to go OUT TO THE DOCTOR?
It doesn't make sense, and procedure or not I don't see that I should've had to go out making myself feel worse just because I must have this piece of paper for work purposes.
Anyway, after I had said my piece, I decided that sitting here with this doctor was a big waste of time. So I got up, said, “So coming here was a complete waste of time then!”, and walked right out of the doctor's office and back home.
No, I didn't get the sick note. Do I need it? Well, maybe I do or maybe not but I do not have it. What will the consequences be of that? Probably very little, at at worst they might deduct pay for those two days since I have no “evidence” of where I was. Or if they're feeling REALLY petty then they might send me a warning letter. Probably the first of these.
Actually I don't care what they do and I'm certainly NOT going to lose any sleep over it. I no longer care WHAT goes on or doesn't go on here. What is important now is the 90 or so days I have left here before my Final Release from this Saudi Arabian nonsense.
Oh, one more thing. On Sunday morning (was about mid-morning I suppose) I had a phone call at home from the Head of Department. He sounded like all the world's troubles were on his shoulders. Actually that is how he normally sounds. But the situation here is this: we are very short-staffed and so any absence such as mine stretches the human resources of the English department to breaking point. I don't know how many of the classes on Saturday or Sunday, if any, were covered. I know for certain that the Wednesday afternoon nursing school classes were cancelled. The point here is that almost NO COVER was available for my classes. That is two days and eleven lessons between two classes that had almost no teacher cover on them. What if I had been away the whole week? It is possible. Anyway, the HoD said he's been talking with the Dean or Assistant Dean about the lesson cover problem and that this was a big problem. He wanted to know a few things – one, how was I. Two, was it just flu or …. well, the BIG ONE (Swine Flu). Three, how long was I likely to be off, and there he was VERY glad to hear that I WAS going to be back at work tomorrow, Monday. He also asked me if I had been to the doctor for the sick note. I told him I'd been last week to SEE the doctor.
I have not said that I do not have the sick note. If they ask, I will send them to that stupid doctor and he can deal with it. I'm NOT going to mess around with it!
Hehe, and AGAIN on Monday morning the HoD called me. Was I going to be in today? Yes, I said I was. But, he said, he'd been in to the teaching block and according to my teaching schedule I have no classes today. Yes I DO, I told him. That teaching schedule over there is wrong. And, he asked me, what happened with my class at 7.30am this morning? I HAVE no class at 7.30am on a Monday, I said.
Yes, another out-of-date teaching timetable problem. And this begs ANOTHER question – HOW would he have arranged cover for my lessons as it is clear he did not even HAVE an up-to-date TEACHOING SCHEDULE for me???
Once again – basic things done very badly here. And THIS TIME it is not a Saudi mistake but one by our very own Head of Department.
Is that a first?
Well it’s not an internet café setting, and I’m standing up as I type this but this is a new setting and new way of doing my blog entry for today.
So where am I and what the hell am I on about? Well, in fact I’m in my classroom. In front of me sit …. Well, actually there is no-one here at all except me, my bottle of water and the “entertainment pack” that I brought with me today. That comprises one mobile phone plus headset for music or radio, several puzzle books (which are all about ten years old and mostly unused) and one travel writings book (“Long Way Round” – McGregor and Boorman).
I might get onto the book. My mobile phone is nearly out of battery charge. I have started my water (and, by the way, if you’re wondering WHICH variety I drink, it is Nestle PureLife – one of my favourites!). And if standing up and typing is tiring then I will sit down and rest a while before resuming.
Sounds like I’m having a good day? Well, as days go here it isn’t so bad. It is the last day before the two weeks of November holiday which is what they call “Hajj” here. No, I don’t know what the occasion of the holiday is, and I can’t say that I really care. Holiday is what it is here and that is a break from the classroom. Yes, I suppose it will be a boring two weeks of my life here, but after my fortnight of flu bacteria I feel I am in need of a rest.
Yes, sadly you DID read correctly. I HAVE indeed had my third bout of flu here in Saudi Arabia. That makes it three times I have been down with flu in just over eight months. And that’s not all of course. If we are to count all my sick and not-feeling-well days, then it will show 3 x influenza, 1 x migraine headache, 1 x month long ear infection blockage problem and long bouts of tiredness and some amount of insomnia (though that is rare).
Normally I consider myself a fairly bug-free kind of guy. In an average year I might have the flu twice at most. But THREE TIMES? And THAT plus ear plus MIGRAINE??
It really came home to me this last week what a rough time I have had here in terms of health and wellbeing. How many of you out there get ill like I have been in the space of eight months of a normal year? Yes, you might have SOME of the things I mentioned, but certainly NOT all together in one continual spell.
There is no doubt that, for me, Saudi Arabia is a difficult country to live in in many ways. Whereas the work-related ways are well documented in these blog pages, I have not said much about the health ways. Well, generally I feel alright and I don’t feel like I’m dropping off the stage of life just yet of course. But just LOOK at what it IS doing to me!
Not only that, there is the element of exercise, or rather lack of it. Apart from the pacing up and down the classroom floor and the stage I have at the front, I have had little chance of any good walking. Well, you can’t do it when you live in the middle of the desert as I do AND when it is over 50 celsius in the summer months. I think that THIS is what I have missed most of all in living here – the fact that I pretty much HAVE TO stay in and there is no chance of going out to explore my surroundings. REALLY miss that. Not that there’s much to explore out here – unless you enjoy endless boring sand and the occasional camel. Oh, but last week there were two camels walking RIGHT NEXT TO THE ROAD when I went into town for my birthday in the taxi. A birthday surprise from the desert you could say! Hmm …. I’ve never quite seen camels up THAT close before. BIG, aren’t they?
Anyway, I digress a little as always. But hey, why NOT? Whose blog IS THIS anyway! If I wanna ramble and pontificate then what better place to do it?
Back I go then to the main theme of these last two weeks which is my flu strike-down. And WHAT a flu it was! I would describe it as a “whispering death” type of flu. It came on me very slowly and gradually in week 1 and by the start of week 2 it was a fully blown blow-yer-head-off killer of a flu which, at its height, had me self-confined in my room for four days (this included last weekend).
How did it start? Well we must go back to the start of the week beginning Saturday 7th November. It started being rather more difficult to get up in the morning, which I simply attributed to tiredness at the end of a very long period of teaching. Well, I thought, no matter because the holiday is only in a few weeks.
Ah, but it DID matter. As that week wore on, I grew steadily more exhausted both DURING the day and in the afternoons. Why could this be, I thought. It is not holiday time yet. Well, my week grew worse and worse. You know when something is up when your usually sharp-witted self in class cannot cope with student questions and when break time is always too short. Oh, AND because my head was becoming increasingly “cloudy” and somewhat dizzy. Well, maybe not dizzy but certainly there was a big slowdown going on up there. Kind of like a brain cell strike was spreading and growing. The more the week went on, I felt tired, REALLY unable and could NOT keep the day going.
But get this – there were few of the more traditional flu symptoms. I was eating normally, did not notice any temperature increase and I did not have what you would call the “muscle aches” of real flu. Instead I had extreme tiredness, a strange of hazy, dizzy feeling in my head which made any kind of thinking a tortuous process. I was reduced to the brain capacity of …. well, a old man approaching ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE!
No no don't worry – I'm not succumbing to THAT. At least not YET, and I'm sure I have many more good years of full brain power to come yet. But the feeling was that any kind of thinking took an awful lot of effort and access to certain parts of my brain were restricted or blocked.
I was not at all well. The worst day of course was Wednesday when, on waking up, I felt really bad but thought that since it WAS Wednesday I would just get through the day and then have the weekend to recover. A BIG mistake! Yes, I went in to class. But as lessons passed by (and there were only four of them on this morning), I felt worse and worse and WORSE.
By the end of Lesson 3 I knew that was it for the day and that I had to go home. It was break time and out I went to the communal area and fell into a chair. I was finished but I had to do something. So just before Lesson 4 I went to the classroom of my colleague and said to him that I was feeling bad and that I was finished for the day and that I was simply not able to do my classes after lunch. Yes, I STILL had three more to come that day!
Well, I did say I would see Lesson 4 through and that afterwards I was going home. And that's what I did. Oh, but how SLOWLY I was moving and how bad did I feel! My weekend had started early but not in the way I would have liked. Went home and, I think, straight to bed.
Now, what I haven't mentioned so far is that YES I DID go to the doctor …. at the START of the week on Sunday. It was the early stages of my flu. I already had the extreme tiredness feeling and knew I had to do something at that early stage. So over I went after my lessons and after I had got changed, I wandered over to the so-called Employee Health Center at the time they said I should go.
Procedure over there always seems the same. You come in and state your problem making sure not to tell the nurses much about it since they don't pass this on to the doctor anyway. Then into the Waiting Area which is, of course, a Male Waiting Area because the Female Waiting Area is behind a screen. You can see the ladies as you come in but you go off to the right to your Male Waiting Area while they are segregated in theirs. You can hear them talking, and if you wanted you could always peer through the cracks between barriers to see them. But NOT sit with them and certainly not talk with them over the partition. Ooofff – men and women MIXING?? Not here mate!
Now, the first thing you ALWAYS have to do is go have your temperature and blood pressure taken. Absolutely ALWAYS! And WHATEVER you go there for! Then you go back and sit in the segregated Waiting Area and wait more for the doctor to be ready. Then you are called and you follow the nurse to his room. Inside there he is sitting there doing …. something with either your medical records or somebody else's or both. Down you sit and wait till he looks as though he is ready. But you never quite know.
He looks at you …. well, I should rather say he looks THROUGH YOU with the strange eyes that he has and you don't know if he is waiting for you to talk or not. There is no word from the nurse on why you are there so any info you gave to her or any or the other nurses is useless!
OK, now time for you to talk and so you tell him what's up. I don't know, but I so often feel that these doctors aren't the least bit interested in your description of your troubles. Anyway, I told him of my symptoms and also I mentioned my migraine as it seemed relevant given it was not so long ago and such these things should be mentioned. “Who told you it was a migraine?”, he wanted to know. I said that nobody actually DID tell me but I supposed it was since it was like no other headache I'd ever had and that I had to have lights off and lie down and felt sick. Not necessarily a migraine, he said. Just a big headache because after all it is because of he climate.
Now, I am not a doctor. But to dismiss a serious thing like THAT was strange. I still consider that it WAS migraine though I have no experience of such things. And yet, from all descriptions of migraine headaches I KNOW that it must have been because of those different aspects I mentioned – dark room, feeling sick and its severity.
So the migraine was discounted. And what next? Well, the usual prescription of pills, though I noted it was on a larger piece of paper than normal. He noted down in my medical file this, also muttering the words, “healthy young man”, as he was doing so. Two of those were and ARE true, but as I know now, I was FAR from being healthy.
His last words were that I had to go home, eat a big meal then and then later eat ANOTHER big meal. And take the pills and I would feel alright in the morning. And if I was not well the next day then I should go to the clinic in the hospital.
Know what? I am more and more convinced that I myself could be a doctor. All you need is a prescription pad and a few choice phrases to give out to all who enter your clinic. Such words should either serve the function of Dismissing Your Patient In The Most Effective Way. Because you are a Busy Man and have many other sick people to attend to.
Yeah! I can do that! White Coat Land here I COME!!
Oh, and I almost forgot. You need a steady supply of antibiotics. No other medicines are required by any patient …. EVER!
I'm sure some enterprising soul out in China has a readymade DIY Doctor's Kit just WAITING for its first orders. ME FIRST!!
Ah, but there's more to add to this. I HAVE become a doctor! YES, didn't you know? Well, I was “christened” as Dr. Wilding by our Course Registrar here who attached a post-it note with my “title” to my newest weekly timetable (or something like that). This has become something of an in-joke between myself and my colleagues. And hey – I like the tag! There is one class of students who address me as either “Teacher” or “Doctor”. It's a lot better than the Wednesday afternoon nursing school ladies who call me only “Mister”.
And much better than being just plain old Teacher David as I was the first semester here with the army boys.
Anyway, back to the flu story just one last time. I DID have Saturday and Sunday off this week. For the four days of Thursday to Sunday of the week just passed I did NOT leave this room at all. My colleague popped his head in every now and then asking if there was anything I needed from the shop. That was very helpful indeed and I am extremely grateful to him, and without that help I would have had to struggle to the shop myself and that would have NOT been possible in the condition I was in. Small tasks became large ones and a tired and heavy feeling had taken over my body in those four days. So a big THANK YOU to him for helping me out.
Now then, I realised I would have to go and get a sick note from our “friendly neighbourhood doctor” as college procedure would require it. So on Sunday evening when I was feeling rather better I made my appointment and went over. OK OK – the usual procedures were gone through. When I was in front of the doctor I said to him that I needed to have a sick note for work. No, he said, he would NOT give me one. Why? Because he cannot give such a thing for days that have passed and can ONLY give it for sick days to come like tomorrow. Well, I said, tomorrow is useless since I will be back to work and I NEED THIS SICK NOTE to give them. No, he repeated, these are the rules.
What an IDIOT! That sitting there and refusing got me really angry. So I said to him, “OK, why, last week, did you just give me your pills and tell me I would be alright in the morning? Because I really was NOT alright! You could and SHOULD have given me the sick note THEN!”.
He had no answer to that and simply said that I should have come back. I was not ABLE to come, I said.
Well, should I drag my sick body from one side of the compound to the other just for the sick note? If I am SICK, it means I CANNOT go out anywhere! And what if my students or colleagues had seen me out there? They would think, “Oh, I see he is HERE but not in class!”.
The definition of Being Ill is that you are NOT able to go out and do your job. So why is it that being ill STILL means you have to go OUT TO THE DOCTOR?
It doesn't make sense, and procedure or not I don't see that I should've had to go out making myself feel worse just because I must have this piece of paper for work purposes.
Anyway, after I had said my piece, I decided that sitting here with this doctor was a big waste of time. So I got up, said, “So coming here was a complete waste of time then!”, and walked right out of the doctor's office and back home.
No, I didn't get the sick note. Do I need it? Well, maybe I do or maybe not but I do not have it. What will the consequences be of that? Probably very little, at at worst they might deduct pay for those two days since I have no “evidence” of where I was. Or if they're feeling REALLY petty then they might send me a warning letter. Probably the first of these.
Actually I don't care what they do and I'm certainly NOT going to lose any sleep over it. I no longer care WHAT goes on or doesn't go on here. What is important now is the 90 or so days I have left here before my Final Release from this Saudi Arabian nonsense.
Oh, one more thing. On Sunday morning (was about mid-morning I suppose) I had a phone call at home from the Head of Department. He sounded like all the world's troubles were on his shoulders. Actually that is how he normally sounds. But the situation here is this: we are very short-staffed and so any absence such as mine stretches the human resources of the English department to breaking point. I don't know how many of the classes on Saturday or Sunday, if any, were covered. I know for certain that the Wednesday afternoon nursing school classes were cancelled. The point here is that almost NO COVER was available for my classes. That is two days and eleven lessons between two classes that had almost no teacher cover on them. What if I had been away the whole week? It is possible. Anyway, the HoD said he's been talking with the Dean or Assistant Dean about the lesson cover problem and that this was a big problem. He wanted to know a few things – one, how was I. Two, was it just flu or …. well, the BIG ONE (Swine Flu). Three, how long was I likely to be off, and there he was VERY glad to hear that I WAS going to be back at work tomorrow, Monday. He also asked me if I had been to the doctor for the sick note. I told him I'd been last week to SEE the doctor.
I have not said that I do not have the sick note. If they ask, I will send them to that stupid doctor and he can deal with it. I'm NOT going to mess around with it!
Hehe, and AGAIN on Monday morning the HoD called me. Was I going to be in today? Yes, I said I was. But, he said, he'd been in to the teaching block and according to my teaching schedule I have no classes today. Yes I DO, I told him. That teaching schedule over there is wrong. And, he asked me, what happened with my class at 7.30am this morning? I HAVE no class at 7.30am on a Monday, I said.
Yes, another out-of-date teaching timetable problem. And this begs ANOTHER question – HOW would he have arranged cover for my lessons as it is clear he did not even HAVE an up-to-date TEACHOING SCHEDULE for me???
Once again – basic things done very badly here. And THIS TIME it is not a Saudi mistake but one by our very own Head of Department.
Is that a first?
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Happy Birthday to ME!
Thursday 5th November 2009
OK, yes, today IS indeed 42 years to the day since I entered this complex place we call "the world". And still I rise, I carry on. I've been down plenty in recently years but HERE'S TO THE PERFECT YEAR TO COME!
Douglas Adams in his famous book, "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", described the number, 42, as the answer to, "Life, The Universe And Everything". Well, as you may recall, this was the answer given by the super-intelligent supercomputer, Deep Thought, when asked the question.
So that's a good sign. In addition, my age comes between two awkward prime number ages of 41 and 43. A Perfect Age in amongst two indivisible ones! Life has a funny way to reward you and yet to remind you that your fun won't last THAT long.
Did you know, also, that the age decade of the 40's contains more prime number ages than most others? Well, I will have to wait another thirty years to my seventies before once again there are three other prime number ages contained. And THAT'S a wait and a HALF! But I'm quite sure I won't be updating THIS blog when I get THERE!
Well …. WHAT a place to spend a birthday! I mean, birthdays are only much fun for kids in my view. I don't make a big thing of mine and I don't expect much to happen though I like to celebrate in some way. One thing is for sure – my “festivities” will be a lot “dryer” than last year's ones! But that's only a result of where I am, and if I was still in Krakow then I'm sure I would enjoy a similarly “liquid celebration” again.
Of course this will be the only Desert Birthday I'll be having. No repeats of that experience. So what's on the cards today? Well, I'll be going out in a few hours with some teacher colleague friends. Just into town for some coffee and/or a meal someplace. Not much other choice possible. But if there IS one thing you can say about this country, then it is that they DO have a good choice of places to eat out. Well, you only have to look at the SIZE of them to see that!
Been doing a bit of online shopping too. Just one or two things to start a new year with. Unfortunately I will have to wait until I'm next in the UK to get my hands on any of them. I DO NOT and I WOULD NOT risk having anything larger than a letter posted here! The only time I tried out the system to get something posted here (a PC game), it just never arrived. If anyone wonders what it is to be isolated and wants to feel it first-hand, come live in Saudi Arabia! You can't get stuff SENT to you, your only REAL contact is if you have a computer with an internet connection, and as for simple things like PHONE CALLS …. well, you can burn a hole in your wallet on your mobile phone or, better, go to your computer, get a skype account and buy some skype credit. Then phone whoever you want online through skype.
But … you have to hope for a good internet connection. And that varies tremendously depending on where you are, the time of day and what your method of going online is. Mine, the “wireless” USB plug-in modem method, is the best of a bad bunch. I have talked about this before, but most people here are either on the snail-pace modem-and-phone-line or some kind of DSL or ADSL link …. AGAIN requiring installation and a phone line (and, no doubt, delays in getting it all set up).
I used to think that it was my location in this apartment building which was the reason for my bad connection. But now I realise that is nonsense. I have had almost ZERO connection and then other times I have had multiple internet website windows open plus skype video plus downloading and more all at the same time. Like the country I am in, you can't predict it, you can't reason with it and have to take it as it comes. And YEAH it frustrates the HELL out of you!
Well, I don't care much for this place any more. I have my sights set on my Exit Plan and all I have to do is negotiate the last few steps.
Ahh – speaking of that, if we assume that 10th February is the Day Of Departure, then it means I have less than ONE HUNDRED DAYS TO GO to the end. But before we jump too high, it is not confirmed WHEN this will happen yet. But it will be sometime between 10th February and 13th March, which is the last day of my job contract. But, as I said last time, it is looking like I will have 23 holiday days remaining which, counting back from 13th March, will take me to around mid-February.
A long time still left, though not so long considering what I have done already.
Now, to the classes. Well, things livened up a little this week in he 21-hour class. The “problem” with this class is the divide between abilities. There are four or five VERY low-level students, and there are around three much higher level ones. Well, it is not unusual to have a class with different abilities in it, that's true. But in MY class the problem is that the good ones go too fast and the bad ones go too slow. You start them on, for example, a grammar exercise from the book and a few moments later you hear, “Teacher, I'm finished!”, from the left-hand side while those on the right of the classroom haven't yet started writing or are still looking for the right page or are tapping away at their electronic dictionaries (which, actually, they overdo and only distracts them).
It was on Tuesday after maybe Lesson 2 or 3. A normal type of lesson, a normal type of day. On this day we had been studying nouns and whether you need to put “a” or “an” in front of them. I had explained this a few weeks ago, and repeated this again on this day that it is NOT the LETTER that the noun starts with but the SOUND at the start of the word which determines whether you use “a” or “an”. For example, (if you are not a teacher or not aware of this) we say “a dog”, “a horse”, “an animal”, “an umbrella”, but then we say “an hour”, “an honest man”, “a unique person” and “a university”. Well the higher ability students got this OK, but those at a lower level struggled. They had been told (as many students ARE) that it was words STARTING with a VOWEL (a e i o u) that required “an” and words beginning with consonants begin with “a”. And perhaps also, they were told something like “This is the rule but here are the exceptions”.
Too much time as a teacher can be spent “undoing” what other teachers have mis-taught before either through error or not so good understanding of how grammar works. Well, I don't claim I know the whole 'Grammar Book' and I don't say that I am any better a teacher than my colleagues. But such problems of “teaching and un-teaching” DO and WILL come up and I cannot know what students have had before appearing in MY classroom.
OK, so during that lesson part there WAS this difficulty with getting the concept of that it is vowel SOUND and not vowel LETTER that determines “a” or “an”. I thought I got through it reasonably well. There was even one student of the high-ability side of the class who tried explaining all this in Arabic to those who weren't getting it. Some teachers would shudder at such a thing happening in the classroom and feel that ONLY the teacher should do the talking. I maintain that the class is a “team” and that we all work together AND that it is a GOOD thing having a mixture of abilities because they can help each other. This helps and, I think, motivates and makes people feel more a part of “the learning process”. As the teacher, I initiate, I guide but I do NOT dictate how the lesson goes. There is something called “Lesson Flow” which MUST be maintained. What is it? Well, as its name suggests, it is that the momentum of the lesson needs to be maintained for it to be successful. There are things like the teacher stopping the lesson to explain a word or the lesson being “on hold” because some students understand while others do not need to be ironed out. These things INTERRUPT the Lesson Flow if not sorted out quickly. The way to do THAT is to involve the students in their own and each others' learning. Why do you, the teacher, feel the need to keep control of everything?
Anyway, I digress slightly. Back to the lesson. So one student had been explaining how the a/an thing worked. Then it was break time and out the students went. I tidied a little then went out myself only to them all standing around in a group having one of those famous Saudi “heated discussions”. Hah! And YOU thought it was only the military lot that did this! Well it was certainly creating a stir, and even though it was break time there were students in other classrooms looking out their doors at what was going on. At the centre of this was the man who had been the “explainer” in the lesson and all were having a go at him.
Now, you never quite know how serious they are since they do not show angry faces and it all seems to be rather non-serious. But some of them said to me, “Teacher, teacher, we want him out! He talks all the time and doesn't let us!”
I didn't take this too seriously, though there obviously WAS a problem. After break time and back in the last lesson of the day and we had a few things to resolve. The lower-level students felt that things were going too fast for them. Well, I had noticed this of course before. I told them that I did not want to go too fast and did not want to go too slow either. But we did agree that things needed to slow down and that from tomorrow would be the start of that. Perhaps this means less of the specialist science and medical book stuff and more of the basic English grammar and writing practice.
Now THERE'S a thing – I've never had a class who said they want to do MORE writing! But Arab students DO need it more for obvious reasons of having a different script to come from, difficulties of writing on the line and the change from right-to-left writing to our left-to-right way of doing it. NOT small problems! Even the better students in the class have BIG problems of keeping their writing ON the line and is more often than not sinking down or bouncing up off the line.
Look at this – me talking about teaching here in a normal and fairly positive way! Isn't THAT an achievement?
Speaking of such things (and sorry, but I'm going to end on a low now), I went into class on Monday for the start of my 9.30am lesson. It was break time so the students were all outside. But scrawled on the board in large blue letters were the words, “We love teacher David!”
No, of course this was NOT anyone in my current class. Can you guess? Yes, the idiots were back. Not in MY class but they are in one of the neighbouring classrooms. When I came in the back door way, there were a number of those old army boy students sitting and standing around. I ignored them as best I could and carried on in and then saw THIS on my classroom whiteboard.
I knew instantly who had done it. Who else could be so primitive and so juvenile? IDIOTS really!! Put me in a REALLY bad mood for the rest of that day! Why can't they just f***ck off and leave me be? Well ….. for the same reason as they couldn't do it before – because it amuses their tiny minds of course!
Anyway, this is my Birthday Blog so we'll have NONE of that negativity HERE please!
OK, yes, today IS indeed 42 years to the day since I entered this complex place we call "the world". And still I rise, I carry on. I've been down plenty in recently years but HERE'S TO THE PERFECT YEAR TO COME!
Douglas Adams in his famous book, "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", described the number, 42, as the answer to, "Life, The Universe And Everything". Well, as you may recall, this was the answer given by the super-intelligent supercomputer, Deep Thought, when asked the question.
So that's a good sign. In addition, my age comes between two awkward prime number ages of 41 and 43. A Perfect Age in amongst two indivisible ones! Life has a funny way to reward you and yet to remind you that your fun won't last THAT long.
Did you know, also, that the age decade of the 40's contains more prime number ages than most others? Well, I will have to wait another thirty years to my seventies before once again there are three other prime number ages contained. And THAT'S a wait and a HALF! But I'm quite sure I won't be updating THIS blog when I get THERE!
Well …. WHAT a place to spend a birthday! I mean, birthdays are only much fun for kids in my view. I don't make a big thing of mine and I don't expect much to happen though I like to celebrate in some way. One thing is for sure – my “festivities” will be a lot “dryer” than last year's ones! But that's only a result of where I am, and if I was still in Krakow then I'm sure I would enjoy a similarly “liquid celebration” again.
Of course this will be the only Desert Birthday I'll be having. No repeats of that experience. So what's on the cards today? Well, I'll be going out in a few hours with some teacher colleague friends. Just into town for some coffee and/or a meal someplace. Not much other choice possible. But if there IS one thing you can say about this country, then it is that they DO have a good choice of places to eat out. Well, you only have to look at the SIZE of them to see that!
Been doing a bit of online shopping too. Just one or two things to start a new year with. Unfortunately I will have to wait until I'm next in the UK to get my hands on any of them. I DO NOT and I WOULD NOT risk having anything larger than a letter posted here! The only time I tried out the system to get something posted here (a PC game), it just never arrived. If anyone wonders what it is to be isolated and wants to feel it first-hand, come live in Saudi Arabia! You can't get stuff SENT to you, your only REAL contact is if you have a computer with an internet connection, and as for simple things like PHONE CALLS …. well, you can burn a hole in your wallet on your mobile phone or, better, go to your computer, get a skype account and buy some skype credit. Then phone whoever you want online through skype.
But … you have to hope for a good internet connection. And that varies tremendously depending on where you are, the time of day and what your method of going online is. Mine, the “wireless” USB plug-in modem method, is the best of a bad bunch. I have talked about this before, but most people here are either on the snail-pace modem-and-phone-line or some kind of DSL or ADSL link …. AGAIN requiring installation and a phone line (and, no doubt, delays in getting it all set up).
I used to think that it was my location in this apartment building which was the reason for my bad connection. But now I realise that is nonsense. I have had almost ZERO connection and then other times I have had multiple internet website windows open plus skype video plus downloading and more all at the same time. Like the country I am in, you can't predict it, you can't reason with it and have to take it as it comes. And YEAH it frustrates the HELL out of you!
Well, I don't care much for this place any more. I have my sights set on my Exit Plan and all I have to do is negotiate the last few steps.
Ahh – speaking of that, if we assume that 10th February is the Day Of Departure, then it means I have less than ONE HUNDRED DAYS TO GO to the end. But before we jump too high, it is not confirmed WHEN this will happen yet. But it will be sometime between 10th February and 13th March, which is the last day of my job contract. But, as I said last time, it is looking like I will have 23 holiday days remaining which, counting back from 13th March, will take me to around mid-February.
A long time still left, though not so long considering what I have done already.
Now, to the classes. Well, things livened up a little this week in he 21-hour class. The “problem” with this class is the divide between abilities. There are four or five VERY low-level students, and there are around three much higher level ones. Well, it is not unusual to have a class with different abilities in it, that's true. But in MY class the problem is that the good ones go too fast and the bad ones go too slow. You start them on, for example, a grammar exercise from the book and a few moments later you hear, “Teacher, I'm finished!”, from the left-hand side while those on the right of the classroom haven't yet started writing or are still looking for the right page or are tapping away at their electronic dictionaries (which, actually, they overdo and only distracts them).
It was on Tuesday after maybe Lesson 2 or 3. A normal type of lesson, a normal type of day. On this day we had been studying nouns and whether you need to put “a” or “an” in front of them. I had explained this a few weeks ago, and repeated this again on this day that it is NOT the LETTER that the noun starts with but the SOUND at the start of the word which determines whether you use “a” or “an”. For example, (if you are not a teacher or not aware of this) we say “a dog”, “a horse”, “an animal”, “an umbrella”, but then we say “an hour”, “an honest man”, “a unique person” and “a university”. Well the higher ability students got this OK, but those at a lower level struggled. They had been told (as many students ARE) that it was words STARTING with a VOWEL (a e i o u) that required “an” and words beginning with consonants begin with “a”. And perhaps also, they were told something like “This is the rule but here are the exceptions”.
Too much time as a teacher can be spent “undoing” what other teachers have mis-taught before either through error or not so good understanding of how grammar works. Well, I don't claim I know the whole 'Grammar Book' and I don't say that I am any better a teacher than my colleagues. But such problems of “teaching and un-teaching” DO and WILL come up and I cannot know what students have had before appearing in MY classroom.
OK, so during that lesson part there WAS this difficulty with getting the concept of that it is vowel SOUND and not vowel LETTER that determines “a” or “an”. I thought I got through it reasonably well. There was even one student of the high-ability side of the class who tried explaining all this in Arabic to those who weren't getting it. Some teachers would shudder at such a thing happening in the classroom and feel that ONLY the teacher should do the talking. I maintain that the class is a “team” and that we all work together AND that it is a GOOD thing having a mixture of abilities because they can help each other. This helps and, I think, motivates and makes people feel more a part of “the learning process”. As the teacher, I initiate, I guide but I do NOT dictate how the lesson goes. There is something called “Lesson Flow” which MUST be maintained. What is it? Well, as its name suggests, it is that the momentum of the lesson needs to be maintained for it to be successful. There are things like the teacher stopping the lesson to explain a word or the lesson being “on hold” because some students understand while others do not need to be ironed out. These things INTERRUPT the Lesson Flow if not sorted out quickly. The way to do THAT is to involve the students in their own and each others' learning. Why do you, the teacher, feel the need to keep control of everything?
Anyway, I digress slightly. Back to the lesson. So one student had been explaining how the a/an thing worked. Then it was break time and out the students went. I tidied a little then went out myself only to them all standing around in a group having one of those famous Saudi “heated discussions”. Hah! And YOU thought it was only the military lot that did this! Well it was certainly creating a stir, and even though it was break time there were students in other classrooms looking out their doors at what was going on. At the centre of this was the man who had been the “explainer” in the lesson and all were having a go at him.
Now, you never quite know how serious they are since they do not show angry faces and it all seems to be rather non-serious. But some of them said to me, “Teacher, teacher, we want him out! He talks all the time and doesn't let us!”
I didn't take this too seriously, though there obviously WAS a problem. After break time and back in the last lesson of the day and we had a few things to resolve. The lower-level students felt that things were going too fast for them. Well, I had noticed this of course before. I told them that I did not want to go too fast and did not want to go too slow either. But we did agree that things needed to slow down and that from tomorrow would be the start of that. Perhaps this means less of the specialist science and medical book stuff and more of the basic English grammar and writing practice.
Now THERE'S a thing – I've never had a class who said they want to do MORE writing! But Arab students DO need it more for obvious reasons of having a different script to come from, difficulties of writing on the line and the change from right-to-left writing to our left-to-right way of doing it. NOT small problems! Even the better students in the class have BIG problems of keeping their writing ON the line and is more often than not sinking down or bouncing up off the line.
Look at this – me talking about teaching here in a normal and fairly positive way! Isn't THAT an achievement?
Speaking of such things (and sorry, but I'm going to end on a low now), I went into class on Monday for the start of my 9.30am lesson. It was break time so the students were all outside. But scrawled on the board in large blue letters were the words, “We love teacher David!”
No, of course this was NOT anyone in my current class. Can you guess? Yes, the idiots were back. Not in MY class but they are in one of the neighbouring classrooms. When I came in the back door way, there were a number of those old army boy students sitting and standing around. I ignored them as best I could and carried on in and then saw THIS on my classroom whiteboard.
I knew instantly who had done it. Who else could be so primitive and so juvenile? IDIOTS really!! Put me in a REALLY bad mood for the rest of that day! Why can't they just f***ck off and leave me be? Well ….. for the same reason as they couldn't do it before – because it amuses their tiny minds of course!
Anyway, this is my Birthday Blog so we'll have NONE of that negativity HERE please!
Friday, 30 October 2009
Classes Galore .... but the END is Nigh!
Friday 30th October 2009
Now, this is the third or fourth time I have sat down to write this entry about my lessons this past three weeks.
Is that a good sign? Well, yes, perhaps it is. It means, I think, that I haven't had much to write about. Mind you, also it is true that my teaching schedule is very heavy and so maybe it is that I have not retained enough in my over-stretched mind and maybe I am too tired to get to the keyboard for writing purposes.
Nah, that's an exaggeration. Yes I DO have a heavy teaching timetable of 27 teaching hours these days. It means that most days I start at 7.30am and finish just after 2pm with only the 15-minute breaktime and hour and quarter lunchbreak for relief. The lunchtimes are now all here at home, but every day except Saturday I start right after lunch at 12.30pm which means that I have only about 45 minutes eating and chillout time here. No lunchtime internet session then (except Saturdays as I said). And so all I do is put on the Indian “Neo Cricket” channel and watch whatever they are showing. Just this week has been the India-Australia ODI series which has been good to watch (in the 45-minutes I'm sat here!). Oh, and last week was the first of the so-called “Champions League Trophy (CLT)” twenty20 series involving, presumably, the champion counties of England, Australia, South Africa and West Indies. Oh, and the two best India Premier League (IPL) teams, who not surprisingly did very badly since many of their star players were back in their “proper teams”. Well, I DID enjoy the CLT games I watched. Not normally a fan of the “slash and bash” twenty20 format but THIS CLT series did have something proper to watch in it as the teams were REAL ones as opposed to IPL paid-for ones.
So the lunchtimes are shorter. But to compensate for this I do not go into the college unless I REALLY must …. which is, in fact, only when there are meetings and on Wednesday afternoons when I take in my used-up week's class registers. Oh yeah, and of course on Saturday afternoon and Monday afternoon for the 2nd year Clinical class lessons.
Well, why SHOULD I go in? I have spent MORE than enough wasted time in that building and sitting in that chair and for WHAT? Nothing – that's what! To have half a year of my life WASTED by that place and their total disregard for and contempt of what my colleague and I tried to do with those soldier boy moron so-called “students”. Hah, every time I use that word with them it makes me seethe. Just to see them now every day, as I have to do, in the 'new' section of the building I have to go to teach is enough. Thankfully they are now somebody else's problem and headache (though THAT was mentioned last time). Well, I say Hello to a few of them – the rare few who ARE worthy of wearing those green medical students 'uniforms', but the rest of them can f***k off! Anyway, going back to my staying away, I don't even bother to sign out now, and nothing happens. Because I am over at this other building, I am not required to sign in. The way I see it, I finish after 2pm and I'm certainly NOT going to go all the way in to college just to bloody SIGN OUT. What a waste of time! Nobody checks it or cares about it.
And anyway, for now the gate-hole in the wall is open again! Remember that? Yes, and remember how it got closed again with no warning? Well, we'll see how long THAT lasts this time. For now, it IS open during the day till about 4pm which is time enough for me to conveniently use it to and from my classroom and that building. I sincerely hope it DOES stay open, but this place being what it is you can never rely on that (or, indeed, on ANYTHING!).
OK so here we are just after the completion of Week 3 of teaching this new timetable here at the college.
And I must say that things are going quite well on the teaching side now.
Wait a momento, buddy boy! Did you just say something NICE about teaching here? Hang on, let's check back a mo …. YES, it seems I DID!
Must be the sun. It's still very hot out here in the afternoons, and it must be getting to me. Am I getting …. “comfortable” here?
No, no, NOOOO!! Nothing of the sort! But I DO, at last, have a class now which I DO enjoy teaching.
What a relief! Why couldn't I have had them from the beginning? Things might have worked out for me a whole lot different instead of having idiot-brain soldier boys making my life a hell. Ah well – that's the way it has worked out. But NO – before you ask – I will NOT be changing my mind about leaving after my year is up.
A very nice class they are! I mean the 21-hour a week 'Pre-Clinical' class as they are called by the college. This just means that it is a kind of “foundation level” course before they join the college properly. The aim is to get them a grounding in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and in the English language of science lectures and texts which they are likely to see in the course of their studies.
The way they do things here is NOT to divide the students up by English language level. So the class you get is a mix from the good, the middling and the very basic abilities of English. But as an average, you can say that the class is at 'Elementary Level'.
I don't have a problem with this. Even in a language school where students ARE more divided by language level, there are always students who are in the “wrong class” either because they have come too far, too fast or because they messed up the Language Level Test or some other reason. As a teacher, you simply have to deal with it. And usually what happens is that the students help each other. Some days you have to over-explain things to individuals who have not quite grasped what your instructions were (for example). But that's OK and is just part of the job of Language Teacher. All you can do is go for the “Safe Middle Ground”. Yes, it is true that those at the lower end might get frustrated at not understanding and yes, those at the higher end might want things to go faster. But you simply CAN'T please everyone ALL the time. Some teachers would say you should do more to cater for such mixed level classes by giving them different work to do, but that is NOT feasibly possible and you only end up with extra work. And HOW do you judge who is Stream 'A', Stream 'B' and Stream 'C' anyway? A pointless waste of a teacher's time and energy, and let's face it guys we spend WAY too much time on preparation as it is! Don't break your back!
So nothing much to say about the class. The coursebooks are OK. A couple of funny moments such as when I was doing a lesson-part on Plants. I asked, first of all, what we humans have as our Basic Needs. The obvious answers came from them like Air, Water, Food etc …. then one student shouted out “Women!”. Funny! Remember that Saudi classes are all male. Made me smile anyway. Ahh, and how right he is too! Oh, and another time went like this. In the grammar book we use (Betty Azar) there is a section on Present Simple, and on one page there is a picture of the solar system and some statements about it that you have to fill in the Present Simple of the verbs for. I had done the pages before it but then turned back to the Science book to the section on Plants. As always I started off with a brainstorm on what words they associate with the word “plants”. OK, they gave me words like 'earth' and 'sun' and yes, these ARE plant-related. But then I heard one shout out something which ended in “... eenus” except I couldn't hear it. Then I heard “mercury” and “stars”. Didn't understand this, but then I realised what was going on. The students thought I had asked them for words associated with PLANETS! YES, the next page in the grammar book! Well, think about the two words PLANTS and PLANETS and how similar they might sound to a student of English, and especially since they thought I was going on to the 'planets' page of the grammar book! Again, a funny misunderstanding!
Back in time a little now. In Week 1 was the first week of the new timetable and new classes. As ever in this place it was like crawling backwards through a prickly bush to ever get as far as having such an organised thing as a teaching schedule. When we DID get it, as I said before, it was still a thing liable to change and we had no idea for sure WHAT would happen on the first Saturday. So we had to come in at 7.30am on the first Saturday morning and expect …. well, the UNEXPECTED!
As you should know now, if you are a regular reader of all this blog stuff of mine, the Unexpected is Expected and the Unpredictable is Predictable as well as the Illogical being totally Logical. Ahh, but now I'm getting too cynical for my own good because, rather boringly, when I came in reliably just around 7.00am to sign in, I was told that we WERE all to start today but not until Period 3 (at 9.30am). Not much of a delay really!
My teaching timetable has changed a little since Week 1 but I have only had classes shifted about here and there. The 21-hour a week class started with eleven names on the register, boomed up to 23 NAMES and now has settled at the twenty-student mark. That is more than I'm used to but fortunately I have a nice big classroom which I can happily roam around in and not be tripping over bags and feet. Memories of my year of horror where I ALSO had all classes of fifteen in each and with tiny classrooms. Students were doubled up on each side of desks and absolutely NO CHANCE of moving around except up and down from my chair.
So the room and class size is OK for me considering classroom size. Yes it means I have many people to try to get round but that's alright with me. I have to mentally allocate “ticket numbers” to make sure I see everybody in the order they call for help. This can mean I cover a lot of ground in class but that's OK – I need the exercise!
So that's about all on classes. Now I'm going to do another unusual thing in this blog entry – I'm going to FINISH with some GOOD NEWS!
Surely not! I always end on a low! Ah but not today!
So what is it? Well, do you remember what I said some time ago about not being allowed out at Christmas and New Year? That, unfortunately DOES still remain the case. HOWEVER, let us now look forward to that Date Which Is Cherished which is, of course, my DEPARTURE DATE from Saudi Arabia.
My contract ends, I think, on 13th March 2010. This is about two weeks into Semester Two of the college year. Before that there is a two-week holiday which runs from 10th to 27th February, and this is a college holiday where all is closed.
As I knew it, I have sixteen (16) holiday days left of my Annual Holiday Entitlement which is, as you remember, 49 days in total. Are you getting a hint already? Ah, but there's more, and I had a surprise with my most recent payslip on which was the message “Leave Without Pay 7 days” and a deduction from my salary to reflect this.
When I saw this Leave Without Pay deduction, I was horrified. I thought, naturally, that the Powers That Be had deducted me for all those time when I did not sign out. But I asked about this and was told that this pay slip was for September.
Now, I hope I can explain this properly. Everyone who joins the college as a teacher has 49 days of holiday entitlement. However, until you have completed a full year on the job, you can not take them all at once. Well, there is also the rule that you cannot take a holiday in the first five months of contract, but I am past that now. It works out like this: until your full year is up, you have an “Accrued” number of holiday days. If you decide to take your holiday in month 6 then this means you have 'accrued' 49 x (6/12) holiday days which means about 25 days is possible. If you want more than 25 days then you need to EITHER have the remainder as “Leave Without Pay” or you can “Borrow From Future Holiday”. In the first case, you lose money but not holiday days and in the second case it is the opposite.
So with my summer holiday, I had 'accrued' 26 holiday days and had to decide which option to take. Well, in FACT, I decided to Borrow From Future and I wrote this on the memo which went with my Holiday Request form. However, like all things here, the incompetent fools upstairs either didn't see this or forgot it. So THAT is why I had the seven Leave Without Pay days on my pay slip.
At first I was quite obviously OUTRAGED at YET ANOTHER screw-up by those people. But then something VERY GOOD was pointed out to me. And that is that I STILL have now TWENTY-THREE (23) Holiday Days left to go and not sixteen as previously thought!
Yes, I lost money through the seven LWOP days. But DO YOU SEE what this means now?? YES!! It means I can leave EVEN EARLIER than I first thought. And that most likely means that on 10th February when Semester 2 ends, I will be FREE!
THE END IS IN SIGHT!
Of course NONE of this is going to be confirmed until much later and many stupid things can STILL get in the way. So don't jump around for me just yet and save your party candles until I know for SURE! This is only the THEORETICAL End Date, and is still to be confirmed.
But OH what a Nice Thought to end today's blog on!
Now, this is the third or fourth time I have sat down to write this entry about my lessons this past three weeks.
Is that a good sign? Well, yes, perhaps it is. It means, I think, that I haven't had much to write about. Mind you, also it is true that my teaching schedule is very heavy and so maybe it is that I have not retained enough in my over-stretched mind and maybe I am too tired to get to the keyboard for writing purposes.
Nah, that's an exaggeration. Yes I DO have a heavy teaching timetable of 27 teaching hours these days. It means that most days I start at 7.30am and finish just after 2pm with only the 15-minute breaktime and hour and quarter lunchbreak for relief. The lunchtimes are now all here at home, but every day except Saturday I start right after lunch at 12.30pm which means that I have only about 45 minutes eating and chillout time here. No lunchtime internet session then (except Saturdays as I said). And so all I do is put on the Indian “Neo Cricket” channel and watch whatever they are showing. Just this week has been the India-Australia ODI series which has been good to watch (in the 45-minutes I'm sat here!). Oh, and last week was the first of the so-called “Champions League Trophy (CLT)” twenty20 series involving, presumably, the champion counties of England, Australia, South Africa and West Indies. Oh, and the two best India Premier League (IPL) teams, who not surprisingly did very badly since many of their star players were back in their “proper teams”. Well, I DID enjoy the CLT games I watched. Not normally a fan of the “slash and bash” twenty20 format but THIS CLT series did have something proper to watch in it as the teams were REAL ones as opposed to IPL paid-for ones.
So the lunchtimes are shorter. But to compensate for this I do not go into the college unless I REALLY must …. which is, in fact, only when there are meetings and on Wednesday afternoons when I take in my used-up week's class registers. Oh yeah, and of course on Saturday afternoon and Monday afternoon for the 2nd year Clinical class lessons.
Well, why SHOULD I go in? I have spent MORE than enough wasted time in that building and sitting in that chair and for WHAT? Nothing – that's what! To have half a year of my life WASTED by that place and their total disregard for and contempt of what my colleague and I tried to do with those soldier boy moron so-called “students”. Hah, every time I use that word with them it makes me seethe. Just to see them now every day, as I have to do, in the 'new' section of the building I have to go to teach is enough. Thankfully they are now somebody else's problem and headache (though THAT was mentioned last time). Well, I say Hello to a few of them – the rare few who ARE worthy of wearing those green medical students 'uniforms', but the rest of them can f***k off! Anyway, going back to my staying away, I don't even bother to sign out now, and nothing happens. Because I am over at this other building, I am not required to sign in. The way I see it, I finish after 2pm and I'm certainly NOT going to go all the way in to college just to bloody SIGN OUT. What a waste of time! Nobody checks it or cares about it.
And anyway, for now the gate-hole in the wall is open again! Remember that? Yes, and remember how it got closed again with no warning? Well, we'll see how long THAT lasts this time. For now, it IS open during the day till about 4pm which is time enough for me to conveniently use it to and from my classroom and that building. I sincerely hope it DOES stay open, but this place being what it is you can never rely on that (or, indeed, on ANYTHING!).
OK so here we are just after the completion of Week 3 of teaching this new timetable here at the college.
And I must say that things are going quite well on the teaching side now.
Wait a momento, buddy boy! Did you just say something NICE about teaching here? Hang on, let's check back a mo …. YES, it seems I DID!
Must be the sun. It's still very hot out here in the afternoons, and it must be getting to me. Am I getting …. “comfortable” here?
No, no, NOOOO!! Nothing of the sort! But I DO, at last, have a class now which I DO enjoy teaching.
What a relief! Why couldn't I have had them from the beginning? Things might have worked out for me a whole lot different instead of having idiot-brain soldier boys making my life a hell. Ah well – that's the way it has worked out. But NO – before you ask – I will NOT be changing my mind about leaving after my year is up.
A very nice class they are! I mean the 21-hour a week 'Pre-Clinical' class as they are called by the college. This just means that it is a kind of “foundation level” course before they join the college properly. The aim is to get them a grounding in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and in the English language of science lectures and texts which they are likely to see in the course of their studies.
The way they do things here is NOT to divide the students up by English language level. So the class you get is a mix from the good, the middling and the very basic abilities of English. But as an average, you can say that the class is at 'Elementary Level'.
I don't have a problem with this. Even in a language school where students ARE more divided by language level, there are always students who are in the “wrong class” either because they have come too far, too fast or because they messed up the Language Level Test or some other reason. As a teacher, you simply have to deal with it. And usually what happens is that the students help each other. Some days you have to over-explain things to individuals who have not quite grasped what your instructions were (for example). But that's OK and is just part of the job of Language Teacher. All you can do is go for the “Safe Middle Ground”. Yes, it is true that those at the lower end might get frustrated at not understanding and yes, those at the higher end might want things to go faster. But you simply CAN'T please everyone ALL the time. Some teachers would say you should do more to cater for such mixed level classes by giving them different work to do, but that is NOT feasibly possible and you only end up with extra work. And HOW do you judge who is Stream 'A', Stream 'B' and Stream 'C' anyway? A pointless waste of a teacher's time and energy, and let's face it guys we spend WAY too much time on preparation as it is! Don't break your back!
So nothing much to say about the class. The coursebooks are OK. A couple of funny moments such as when I was doing a lesson-part on Plants. I asked, first of all, what we humans have as our Basic Needs. The obvious answers came from them like Air, Water, Food etc …. then one student shouted out “Women!”. Funny! Remember that Saudi classes are all male. Made me smile anyway. Ahh, and how right he is too! Oh, and another time went like this. In the grammar book we use (Betty Azar) there is a section on Present Simple, and on one page there is a picture of the solar system and some statements about it that you have to fill in the Present Simple of the verbs for. I had done the pages before it but then turned back to the Science book to the section on Plants. As always I started off with a brainstorm on what words they associate with the word “plants”. OK, they gave me words like 'earth' and 'sun' and yes, these ARE plant-related. But then I heard one shout out something which ended in “... eenus” except I couldn't hear it. Then I heard “mercury” and “stars”. Didn't understand this, but then I realised what was going on. The students thought I had asked them for words associated with PLANETS! YES, the next page in the grammar book! Well, think about the two words PLANTS and PLANETS and how similar they might sound to a student of English, and especially since they thought I was going on to the 'planets' page of the grammar book! Again, a funny misunderstanding!
Back in time a little now. In Week 1 was the first week of the new timetable and new classes. As ever in this place it was like crawling backwards through a prickly bush to ever get as far as having such an organised thing as a teaching schedule. When we DID get it, as I said before, it was still a thing liable to change and we had no idea for sure WHAT would happen on the first Saturday. So we had to come in at 7.30am on the first Saturday morning and expect …. well, the UNEXPECTED!
As you should know now, if you are a regular reader of all this blog stuff of mine, the Unexpected is Expected and the Unpredictable is Predictable as well as the Illogical being totally Logical. Ahh, but now I'm getting too cynical for my own good because, rather boringly, when I came in reliably just around 7.00am to sign in, I was told that we WERE all to start today but not until Period 3 (at 9.30am). Not much of a delay really!
My teaching timetable has changed a little since Week 1 but I have only had classes shifted about here and there. The 21-hour a week class started with eleven names on the register, boomed up to 23 NAMES and now has settled at the twenty-student mark. That is more than I'm used to but fortunately I have a nice big classroom which I can happily roam around in and not be tripping over bags and feet. Memories of my year of horror where I ALSO had all classes of fifteen in each and with tiny classrooms. Students were doubled up on each side of desks and absolutely NO CHANCE of moving around except up and down from my chair.
So the room and class size is OK for me considering classroom size. Yes it means I have many people to try to get round but that's alright with me. I have to mentally allocate “ticket numbers” to make sure I see everybody in the order they call for help. This can mean I cover a lot of ground in class but that's OK – I need the exercise!
So that's about all on classes. Now I'm going to do another unusual thing in this blog entry – I'm going to FINISH with some GOOD NEWS!
Surely not! I always end on a low! Ah but not today!
So what is it? Well, do you remember what I said some time ago about not being allowed out at Christmas and New Year? That, unfortunately DOES still remain the case. HOWEVER, let us now look forward to that Date Which Is Cherished which is, of course, my DEPARTURE DATE from Saudi Arabia.
My contract ends, I think, on 13th March 2010. This is about two weeks into Semester Two of the college year. Before that there is a two-week holiday which runs from 10th to 27th February, and this is a college holiday where all is closed.
As I knew it, I have sixteen (16) holiday days left of my Annual Holiday Entitlement which is, as you remember, 49 days in total. Are you getting a hint already? Ah, but there's more, and I had a surprise with my most recent payslip on which was the message “Leave Without Pay 7 days” and a deduction from my salary to reflect this.
When I saw this Leave Without Pay deduction, I was horrified. I thought, naturally, that the Powers That Be had deducted me for all those time when I did not sign out. But I asked about this and was told that this pay slip was for September.
Now, I hope I can explain this properly. Everyone who joins the college as a teacher has 49 days of holiday entitlement. However, until you have completed a full year on the job, you can not take them all at once. Well, there is also the rule that you cannot take a holiday in the first five months of contract, but I am past that now. It works out like this: until your full year is up, you have an “Accrued” number of holiday days. If you decide to take your holiday in month 6 then this means you have 'accrued' 49 x (6/12) holiday days which means about 25 days is possible. If you want more than 25 days then you need to EITHER have the remainder as “Leave Without Pay” or you can “Borrow From Future Holiday”. In the first case, you lose money but not holiday days and in the second case it is the opposite.
So with my summer holiday, I had 'accrued' 26 holiday days and had to decide which option to take. Well, in FACT, I decided to Borrow From Future and I wrote this on the memo which went with my Holiday Request form. However, like all things here, the incompetent fools upstairs either didn't see this or forgot it. So THAT is why I had the seven Leave Without Pay days on my pay slip.
At first I was quite obviously OUTRAGED at YET ANOTHER screw-up by those people. But then something VERY GOOD was pointed out to me. And that is that I STILL have now TWENTY-THREE (23) Holiday Days left to go and not sixteen as previously thought!
Yes, I lost money through the seven LWOP days. But DO YOU SEE what this means now?? YES!! It means I can leave EVEN EARLIER than I first thought. And that most likely means that on 10th February when Semester 2 ends, I will be FREE!
THE END IS IN SIGHT!
Of course NONE of this is going to be confirmed until much later and many stupid things can STILL get in the way. So don't jump around for me just yet and save your party candles until I know for SURE! This is only the THEORETICAL End Date, and is still to be confirmed.
But OH what a Nice Thought to end today's blog on!
Sunday, 25 October 2009
The New Guy - Terminator Mark 2 is BACK!!
Sunday 25th October 2009
Well, the good thing today is that my lessons are actually for ONCE going pretty well. More of that later. Now for the “antics” of our newest colleague.
His premeditated task, it seems, is to do whatever he can get away with and annoy as many people as he can possible manage. And THAT includes teacher colleagues, Head of Department AND the management upstairs if rumours are true.
Yeah, this guy is a truly a Mark II Version of the guy who took his “early leave” last semester and never returned. In case I haven't mentioned already then YES that guy did not, as expected, return here and the last heard of HIM was an email saying his doctor had recommended he DIDN'T do so because the heat would affect his high blood pressure more.
It's a bit like the Terminator trilogy of films (although now, of course, that is a quadrilogy). The first guy was mean and bad-looking and took some stopping. This second guy we have now is the “mercury man” version of the Terminator and will be a lot harder to shift as he can morph himself out of most situations. And the third? Ah well – THAT Terminator, as you may know, was a female Terminator …. We shall see!
Ahh …. as always I digress HUGELY and should be getting back to what I started which was the “new kid on the block”. Well, he's hardly a kid as he's another one in his sixties (so he fits in quite nicely!). The story is that his CV was filled with impressive-sounding things that he had done in his life. For that you can read, “CV fillers supreme”, because that is what it all sounds like without going into details. Anyway, it got him past the scrutiny of the management upstairs who decided he was worth taking on with a view to him becoming the new Head of Department when our current one goes at end January.
When I came back after the summer holiday, I expected to have to vacate my desk because this new guy was due to be sitting there. Not so – was told by the HoD that I could stay there since this new guy had been a complete PAIN all summer long. I think I mentioned that before. So that was fine by me. Well, I don't want my name on an office door and staying anonymous is JUST FINE by me!
Anyway I've just read back and I see his early days I have done already. So let's bring you more up to date with him.
He is being a complete pain in the ass ….. STILL! No, not to me personally. I hardly ever talk to him or see him. He is rarely around in the office at college and, apparently comes in extra early to get his things before our Hod comes in. This is so he can avoid him. So no chance of the training which he is supposed to receive for the eventual takeover. The HoD is not going to chase after him either. And why should he? And anyway, he doesn't really care since he is going from here soon himself.
So he is here now as a teacher like all the rest of us. Ahh, now THIS is where the fun starts. Remember what I said before about us all having to about 27 hours a week teaching? Well, that DOES include him as he IS a teacher after all.
But he has said that he WILL NOT DO more than 21 hours a week!
Yes, you ARE right. There is no basis in the contract for saying this. The contract for ALL teachers says that we do something like 24 hours a week teaching. Also, as many teaching contracts say, there may be more than this which we might have to take on and we cannot refuse such extra hours so long as they are not “unreasonable”. Lawyers: interpret THAT! Well, it means of course that so long as they don't overdo it, an employer can give us more than the 24 hours if it is required.
Says so on ALL teachers contracts. HE is here as a teacher as I understand it. Therefore he has the same written in HIS contract as do ALL of us. So WHY THE HELL does HE think he is better or different to the REST of us?? What RIGHT does HE have to DEMAND to be given no more than 21 hours?
Nobody knows. OK, but this is not the end of it. He has also, on MORE than one occasion, let his class go early OR has simply NOT TURNED UP to teach them on some post-lunch lesson occasions. Yes!! Actually had the damn CHEEK to literally NOT TURN UP for class leaving his students without a teacher.
Now, I don't know about you, but I reckon THAT is “sailing close” to the Gross Misconduct “wind” which, as anyone knows, can lead to instant dismissal and an early exit. If I or ANY OTHER teacher did such a thing then the FULL WEIGHT of employment contract law would come down HARD on a guy who is taking the piss.
The question is WHY is he being allowed to get away with this?
Yesterday, apparently, he was telephoned by the secretary to the Dean of the College that they wanted to see him to talk about this. When she phoned him, he wanted to know why the Dean himself had not phoned him. Well, the secretary (female) told him, it is normal procedure that she should do this. Well, he got very stroppy about this and said that IF the Dean wanted to summon him there then he should telephone him PERSONALLY. He then put the phone down rudely! About ten minutes later he phoned again to ask what it was they wanted to see him for and was told that was a matter for him to discuss with the Dean. Phone down again. Apparently he DID then come in some time later for this discussion. The result of that talk is not yet known. But what IS known is that, once inside the office there was a lot of angry SHOUTING and raised voices from …. well, guess who!!
Yup, from the man himself!
There are many theories being bandied around about what this guy is up to. He HAS been in the Middle East before and claims to know people out here. He has, apparently, been some kind of tutor to some Saudi Royal Family members which may well have brought him some useful contacts. And also may his previous teaching and course management experience out here.
One wild theory is that if or when he gets into the HoD position, everyone here will NOT want to work for him and many will leave. Well, he will know nothing about the job or the procedures here since he is never around. So he might just have all his own cronies which he will then install in the vacant teachers' jobs and he will have got his way.
One thing's for sure: this story will run and run …. WATCH THIS SPACE!
Well, the good thing today is that my lessons are actually for ONCE going pretty well. More of that later. Now for the “antics” of our newest colleague.
His premeditated task, it seems, is to do whatever he can get away with and annoy as many people as he can possible manage. And THAT includes teacher colleagues, Head of Department AND the management upstairs if rumours are true.
Yeah, this guy is a truly a Mark II Version of the guy who took his “early leave” last semester and never returned. In case I haven't mentioned already then YES that guy did not, as expected, return here and the last heard of HIM was an email saying his doctor had recommended he DIDN'T do so because the heat would affect his high blood pressure more.
It's a bit like the Terminator trilogy of films (although now, of course, that is a quadrilogy). The first guy was mean and bad-looking and took some stopping. This second guy we have now is the “mercury man” version of the Terminator and will be a lot harder to shift as he can morph himself out of most situations. And the third? Ah well – THAT Terminator, as you may know, was a female Terminator …. We shall see!
Ahh …. as always I digress HUGELY and should be getting back to what I started which was the “new kid on the block”. Well, he's hardly a kid as he's another one in his sixties (so he fits in quite nicely!). The story is that his CV was filled with impressive-sounding things that he had done in his life. For that you can read, “CV fillers supreme”, because that is what it all sounds like without going into details. Anyway, it got him past the scrutiny of the management upstairs who decided he was worth taking on with a view to him becoming the new Head of Department when our current one goes at end January.
When I came back after the summer holiday, I expected to have to vacate my desk because this new guy was due to be sitting there. Not so – was told by the HoD that I could stay there since this new guy had been a complete PAIN all summer long. I think I mentioned that before. So that was fine by me. Well, I don't want my name on an office door and staying anonymous is JUST FINE by me!
Anyway I've just read back and I see his early days I have done already. So let's bring you more up to date with him.
He is being a complete pain in the ass ….. STILL! No, not to me personally. I hardly ever talk to him or see him. He is rarely around in the office at college and, apparently comes in extra early to get his things before our Hod comes in. This is so he can avoid him. So no chance of the training which he is supposed to receive for the eventual takeover. The HoD is not going to chase after him either. And why should he? And anyway, he doesn't really care since he is going from here soon himself.
So he is here now as a teacher like all the rest of us. Ahh, now THIS is where the fun starts. Remember what I said before about us all having to about 27 hours a week teaching? Well, that DOES include him as he IS a teacher after all.
But he has said that he WILL NOT DO more than 21 hours a week!
Yes, you ARE right. There is no basis in the contract for saying this. The contract for ALL teachers says that we do something like 24 hours a week teaching. Also, as many teaching contracts say, there may be more than this which we might have to take on and we cannot refuse such extra hours so long as they are not “unreasonable”. Lawyers: interpret THAT! Well, it means of course that so long as they don't overdo it, an employer can give us more than the 24 hours if it is required.
Says so on ALL teachers contracts. HE is here as a teacher as I understand it. Therefore he has the same written in HIS contract as do ALL of us. So WHY THE HELL does HE think he is better or different to the REST of us?? What RIGHT does HE have to DEMAND to be given no more than 21 hours?
Nobody knows. OK, but this is not the end of it. He has also, on MORE than one occasion, let his class go early OR has simply NOT TURNED UP to teach them on some post-lunch lesson occasions. Yes!! Actually had the damn CHEEK to literally NOT TURN UP for class leaving his students without a teacher.
Now, I don't know about you, but I reckon THAT is “sailing close” to the Gross Misconduct “wind” which, as anyone knows, can lead to instant dismissal and an early exit. If I or ANY OTHER teacher did such a thing then the FULL WEIGHT of employment contract law would come down HARD on a guy who is taking the piss.
The question is WHY is he being allowed to get away with this?
Yesterday, apparently, he was telephoned by the secretary to the Dean of the College that they wanted to see him to talk about this. When she phoned him, he wanted to know why the Dean himself had not phoned him. Well, the secretary (female) told him, it is normal procedure that she should do this. Well, he got very stroppy about this and said that IF the Dean wanted to summon him there then he should telephone him PERSONALLY. He then put the phone down rudely! About ten minutes later he phoned again to ask what it was they wanted to see him for and was told that was a matter for him to discuss with the Dean. Phone down again. Apparently he DID then come in some time later for this discussion. The result of that talk is not yet known. But what IS known is that, once inside the office there was a lot of angry SHOUTING and raised voices from …. well, guess who!!
Yup, from the man himself!
There are many theories being bandied around about what this guy is up to. He HAS been in the Middle East before and claims to know people out here. He has, apparently, been some kind of tutor to some Saudi Royal Family members which may well have brought him some useful contacts. And also may his previous teaching and course management experience out here.
One wild theory is that if or when he gets into the HoD position, everyone here will NOT want to work for him and many will leave. Well, he will know nothing about the job or the procedures here since he is never around. So he might just have all his own cronies which he will then install in the vacant teachers' jobs and he will have got his way.
One thing's for sure: this story will run and run …. WATCH THIS SPACE!
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