So now I'm here in Saudi Arabia .... and here's what's going on so far ....

Sunday 22nd March 2009
It's just after the beginning of Week 2 here. THIS time I'm going to try to do this regularly as I can. Well, plenty of time in the evenings likely with little to do so may as well make the most of it! In this diary entry I'm going to write about what I did in Week 1 and add my initial thoughts about “the show so far” at the end.

So, first thing is Week 1 and what it was like – my first week of work in a REALLY foreign country.

Well actually not much work at all. Doesn't matter pay-wise as I'm not hourly paid a-la-Poland but paid a proper salary. So I don't have to count every hour as it comes to me. Is that better? Yes in that lack of students/classes is not YOUR fault as a teacher. I always resented the fact that class sizes and the absence/presence of your classes and holiday days AND, on occasions, cancellations and the like were counted against your hours as a teacher. Yes, I'm thinking of York but not only. In the last few years of teaching where I was trying to do it more in Psz. I had very few hours ANYWHERE and therefore struggled to live properly. At the time it didn't seem to matter much as I was trying to do teaching plus internet-related activities (which ultimately was a failure). And I'd had a rough time in teaching in the years at P.L. and L. schools which really demotivated me. NOT helpful. Even the break from teaching in London didn't help much. London wasn't a place I wanted to live in anyway and so I never wanted to find anything to keep me there. Well, London was a disaster and wasn't meant to happen the way it did. But I'm glad I decided to go back into teaching again. Yes, my time in Krakow was rather money-stressed but student-wise it WAS good and I did get a lot out of it.

Anyway, I seem to be waffling. What I was trying to say was that NOW I am on a salary and so not being in the classroom doesn't count against me money-wise. I AM glad I wasn't THRUST into the classroom from Day 1 because (1) I wasn't capable after the airport nonsense, and (2) I wouldn't have had much idea of how to go about it.

There wasn't any teaching in Week 1. In fact, even NOW my hours and class haven't been 100% confirmed yet. And, as I well know by now, I do NOT count the chickens until they're hatched. But it seems likely that my ONE class that I've been told I'll be having will be five days a week and three lots of 50-minutes a day (mornings until lunch). It is not on-site in the English department building but a short ride away in the other building we teach in with some kind of class of soldier boys who either want or have to learn English. Many classes out here are with this kind of students and I've encountered them before in Bournemouth mixed in with other nationalities. Not the best kind of students but then their motivation to learn English is low. “Like a class of little kids in adult bodies”, is what I've been told. Sounds like a class that I will not be getting on with then. But we'll see.

So what did I do in Week 1 then? Well, for the first few days – actually for MOST of that week – there were bits of admin that needed doing and procedures that needed following.

On the first day, the Sunday 15th March I was picked up outside the block here and taken to the Personnel building. Seemed to be a fairly short ride, but on that first day I knew nothing except the inside of that block and the little bit outside – well, not even that as I'd arrived there after the Airport Night needing only to sleep. Had a list of documents to take there and got them into my bag – nothing difficult to find as I had them all ready.

Went there, and in I went to Personnel. Normal kind of building. BUT as I went in, the first of my Saudi stereotypes was broken at ONCE. Yes, there WERE men there in the expected Saudi white 'smock' and red checked headgear. BUT .... two women (later found out they were Filipino) dressed normally with no head covering of any kind. WOMEN at work!! WOMEN not covered up!!! Tear out that page RIGHT AWAY!

The main personnel man was also Filipino. Well, the only thing I didn't have were photos. And no, the TWELVE photos was not a misprint and they had NOT inserted a '1' in front of the '2'. They really DID want twelve photos of passport size. Didn't have them as hadn't been told to bring 'em. BUT OMG – TWELVE PHOTOS!!?? What on EARTH could they need THAT NUMBER for?? Just how many people wanted a photo of me and for what?? I couldn't conceive WHO would want these. Anyway, I didn't have them so would have to get them later – as it was the HoD took me into the nearest town, Khobar a few days later to a photo shop to do that. And VERY CHEAP they were too! I got thirty-two passport size photos for the equivalent of a little less than 10 pounds (UK)! WOW!!

All I had to do in Personnel was fill in and sign various things like Contract (again!) and a kind of non-disclosure form which told me all the things I wasn't allowed to do either in the compound or in the country. I wondered about the “Don't take photos” item and about whether my mobile phone might be frowned on, but it wasn't a problem.

While I was there a couple of other people came and went who were, I think, Sri Lankan and maybe Indian in origin. NOT teachers for sure but maybe they were there to be hospital workers or something.

Once I was done there I had to go to Security and this was for my temporary ID badge. Yup, another form to fill in and yet more waiting. Waiting, Waiting, Waiting seems to be the mantra to chant round here and I sure spent an awful lot of those first few days just sitting and waiting for people to deal with me. Didn't matter since I was feeling pretty rough still from the flight and Airport Experience. The less I had to do, the better. The early part of the morning was going to and from there up and down stairs and in and out of doors, It was pretty hot that day too, and I caught sight of the compound thermometer which said it was around 35deg. C – not quite the hottest I've been in but close. BUT the strange thing is that it didn't seem that hot. I mean, you get that temperature in Britain or Poland and you're dying a hot death. Maybe it was that I was mostly in air-con buildings or maybe just that it is a dry sort of heat here.

Well, nothing much exciting to write about that morning and then lunch time came at 11.30am. Too early? Didn't matter much to me – it was another new part of the college to see (and to remember!) and so I went along to lunch with some other teachers. A confusing maze of corridors and signs to follow which I KNEW I would have difficulty finding alone later especially in my tired state.

A good lunch and a reasonable canteen. Good selection of food items and some NICE COFFEE (which I'm told is only Nescafe but tastes v different!). Portions not huge but adequate considering you don't want to eat much when it's hot. Also bought some more bottles of water for later – water obviously being something I should keep to hand at all times.

Oh, forgot to mention. Discovered that one of the other teachers knew Slough, had encountered Polish people before AND most of all ..... had also been to the same college of FE I was in a few years after me!! Small world or WHAT!!

After lunch more to-ing and fro-ing to complete more parts of the bureaucratic process of “joining” the college as a “fully paid member”. Ah, and there was this medical to do. Yes, ANOTHER one to my amazement. WHY on earth for?? Seems they like to do it at both ends. Same kind of thing as in Harley Street except here they did a few more things such as a urine drug test, more blood tests and they required a urine AND stool sample. I can't tell you HOW LONG it took me to produce that 'stool' but it wasn't immediate! In fact, was only on the third day that FINALLY I had it at night. Hmm .... WHY was the urine test container smaller than the one to deposit my 'stool' into?? I'll never know. Phew – I'll never be a doctor – who on earth would be interested by a piece of shit stuffed into a plastic jar?? I guess to them it's just a thing to test.

All in all the medical took three days to fully complete (mainly due to my inability to produce my 'stool' sample!). But once done, it was another hurdle overcome. These things can easily irritate if you let them but I just them do whatever they got to do and give them whatever they need from me. No point in jumping up and down in the frustration of YET AGAIN giving those SAME details you've already given multiple times already. Better things to waste your energy on. And anyway – it's all for that pot of gold so I guess it's worth it!

That was pretty much Day 1. Day 2 was similar except for meeting more of the teachers .... INCLUDING the three WOMEN TEACHERS they have here. Yes, I DID say WOMEN TEACHERS! In SAUDI ARABIA!! Well, I had read this eastern province was more “progressive” than others and it seems so! NEVER would I have expected this in Riyadh – to have seen women WORKING was one big surprise but as TEACHERS .... well!! And a very nice threesome they were too! Well, there I was sitting in there office drinking tea, eating cake and biscuits and talking. Just like that!! So that is THREE stereotypes torn up in under three days! Mind you, as I was told, such behaviour would be frowned on by the 'religious police' who sometimes do the rounds here and who, I was told, came round recently asking questions and checking things out. Sometimes they come round the accommodation blocks apparently. I wonder what rank they have compared to the actual police and the army, and who answers to who here.

Those first two days I found VERY difficult. Tiredness/jet lag compounded by just TOO MUCH information and different things to try to take in. Not to mention finding my way around a whole new place which I knew I'd have difficulty in doing. Without a map my sense of direction is not the best! But not likely to get a map around here for security reasons, and that's fair enough.

You know, we English teachers are a pretty odd bunch. I had wondered about what kinds of people I would be meeting out here and supposed that anybody who comes out here has to be maybe a few marbles short at LEAST. Yup, certainly are a few, let's say, colourful characters here. As expected, they're all in the older age range, which makes me one of the youngest for a nice change!! Doesn't happen often where I teach! Most of them really have been here a long while and the minimum seems to be about five years. I can't IMAGINE spending THAT amount of time out here but it goes up to thirty-PLUS years that our HoD has spent in the Middle East. Maybe people would find it strange that I've spent 12 years in Poland – a country which only NOW do people know more about due to the amount of them in London and beyond. Each to their own. But here is SO different that my early impressions are that you have to be some special kind of person to get along here. Is it a different temperament? Resistance to the summer heat? The feeling that you're staying here to build up some nice money? The last one is surely the lure to GET people here but why do they stay here so long? This is something I suppose I will work out as I go. Some, I have heard are married here – not sure to which nationality of wife but it is a thing to keep a person in a place for a time for sure. Kept me in Poland – although would I have lasted so long there if I hadn't been married? Who knows!

The other teachers seemed to have developed their own ways of getting by/surviving. These range from TV and internet to the need to get away when they can to doing things like swimming, going to the gym and cycling. Some go further. In fact, many say that you HAVE TO do something. The compound is pretty far from even the nearest town and so to just get away is a hassle. This does bother me and could turn out to be the one thing that gets me the most. The things I like about being in a new place – getting out and about, food, coffee shops, browsing the town, seeing the locals in their environment. Oh, and you can forget about taking photos! OK, in the compound obviously not due to the nature of the place. But even in town it is really NOT allowed and, if seen, the police will likely arrest you and confiscate your camera and maybe take you to jail. Yes, NO PHOTOS!! And there is SO MUCH I'd really LIKE to take! So much that people back home would LOVE to see and that I'd LOVE to show them.

What I'm realising is this: Saudi Arabia must be regarded as a place of work and no more. There is little chance of getting to know anybody here outside the compound. For SURE, VERY little chance of getting to know anybody else other than those I work with. And even LESS chance of having a good time. There is another compound around Dhahran called 'Aramco' which is an American-run oil workers compound. A “Little America” if what I've heard is to be believed. Going there has been suggested as a way to get to know more people and widen a very small social circle. But it is SO far that going there is really an expedition that CAN'T be worth it! Especially since compound rules state that everyone must be inside the compound at night (for security reasons). Now yes, one may choose to defy that. And that is, for some, a matter of personal choice. But for me it is not worth the risk. This is the Golden Goose and I am not going to be risking anything like THAT! Just imagine getting caught – no, better NOT imagine! So even though it might SEEM a good idea, I am sure I WON'T be doing it.

So what WILL I be doing here when I'm not in the classroom? Good question ..... and as I sit here I have no idea at all. I just can't imagine. Once I get my internet set up on my laptop then THAT will really help me NOT to feel so isolated as I'm beginning to already. You might say, “Oh no! You CAN'T sit in your room all the time!”, and in some way you'd be right. But my options are limited. Yes, I feel I will have to take up quite a few things that I've never done before or not done in way-too-many years. Among those are swimming, jogging, going to the gym and cycling. I thought about jogging and the gym but did not bring either shorts or trainers for space and weight reasons (but I needn't have worried as it turns out due to the 30kg baggage limit!). Should I get those when I go home in August? I guess so. But what to do until then? Hmm .... good question AGAIN!!

I find that, when I come back to the room in the evening that I'm in one of two frames of mind. At the start of last week I felt really bad, but probably that was due to the tiredness/jet lag thing. But yesterday and today I have come back feeling a kind of “OMG What am I doing here? HELP!”, kind of feeling and a feeling that it's going to be a long, hard year which I don't KNOW how I'm going to get through. People keep asking me how long I intend to stay and I simply DON'T KNOW and can't give an answer.

Also, my feeling at the end of the day depends who I've spoken to during the day and what they've told me. And, as in any workplace, there those you learn you HAVE TO avoid if you want to try to keep positive and sane. You know the ones – those people who never have a good word to say or who THINK they're giving you good “advice” which only makes you feel worse and more desperate. And those who just drive you mad whenever they open their mouths. Yes, there ARE things I need to know, but I DON'T want to hear all the time the difficulties I might have and things to beware of. If I am to survive this Saudi experience, then I have to keep POSITIVE. Sure – things will happen which will be weird and which may well freak me out. But I'd like to experience those for myself. I think I can quite well enough manage MYSELF to get through it and so long as a few basic principles and Do's/Dont's are followed then things should settle into a reasonable pattern. I don't mean getting into a “routine” but just feeling comfortable in how I do things and how I can get by and not feeling that this is all a complete nightmare. I think it WILL be OK here so long as I find MY WAY to get through it. Sure there will be difficult and sad times. Last night and Friday night were difficult. Friday evening I phoned my mother and spoke to her and to my son. It was nice to speak to them but you're all too aware just how far away they are. And until I have internet properly set up and can do things like Skype then all my friends and family will be too distant.

Ah, speaking of internet and Skype .... I just CAN'T work out how to get it properly working on my phone. Although the signal my phone shows is strong enough, I just can NOT get connected. For Skype, I managed to SOMEHOW on my first evening here and by chance in the morning today it connected me. But most of the time my phone refuses to connect me. For some reason I cannot activate the service on my phone. And since the phone-up instructions are mostly in Arabic, I have no idea what I am doing wrong. As far as I know, the simcard IS active since I can make and receive calls and can send SMS messages. And I have time and time again sent SMS messages with the activation code the website for SMC Telecom tells me to send but NOTHING happens. Is it that my phone is blocked inside the compound? Is the simcard not a proper one? Did I mess around with the settings (I don't think I did)? Or is the signal just too weak to get through to the internet? It IS true that you do not always get a good signal here – it comes and goes from strong to almost zero. So maybe the signal cannot be maintained at a good enough level. Whatever it is, it is DRIVING ME CRAZY especially since I managed to Skype on the first day and thought all was well. Oh, and I got Skype-connected this morning but was in the office so couldn't use it. Ah, AND I got my emails to download too! But just once – other times it refuses to connect.

It all frustrated me and only adds to the feeling of isolation which I have felt these last few days. This just HAS TO pass because if not then I don't know what it will do to me. Yes, there are options to get around that but none of them appeal much. It's likely to be a case of biting the bullet and doing what I would otherwise NOT do.


Tuesday 24th March 2009 – 7.10pm
I was alright until about an hour ago.

There I was sitting with my really-really-exciting “dinner” of bread rolls and cheese spread. Had the train game on and BBC World was on TV with the news. Next thing I know? Flick-Flick-Splutter-Splutter-Flicker-Flicker .... BBC World is gone to be replaced by .... RADIO ARMENIA!!!

I'd even had a good last part of day. Some nice chillin-out green tea had gone down real nicely. I'd got my rolls and milk. Wasn't going to be an active evening – just a normal one. But I'd had a bitch of a day coupled with a HUGE headache yesterday evening and had woken up with it this morning too. Was definitely in a really NON tolerant mood where everything WAS going to annoy me today no matter what it was. Ohh, and it DID too. STILL no firm news about when this 15-hours a week one-and-only class of mine was to start. If anything, the news about it today was NOT positive. The word was that the soldier-boy students in question were in Riyadh just now. According to the HoD this meant that, to him, the chance of them being back for a start on Saturday was slim and now it was looking at a midweek or, worse STILL, a start delayed for ONE MORE WEEK!

Now, you may be saying, “Why does it matter as you're still paid whatever happens?”. It DOES matter. Having sat for three months in LONDON doing nothing and getting very wound up not knowing what was happening in Riyadh, Oman or ANYWHERE at all, I certainly do NOT want to continue the do-nothing thing here paid or NOT! Ad it is only marginally better that the difference between here and London is that here I AM getting paid for doing nothing. Pay is not the issue in this for me. Maybe that 'session' in London has affected me more than I know, but for SURE I am NOT about to be sitting about doing nothing AGAIN. Doing nothing all day and evening does things to a guy's mind. I need to get started, I need to be doing something, I NEED TO BE USEFUL. And most of all, I NEED TO KNOW THAT I HAVE DONE THE RIGHT THING by quitting Poland to come here for this year or so.

I have not been convinced that I have done the right thing in leaving Krakow. Yes, i had my reasons for doing so and they are still valid in that I DO still have this money problem which I MUST address. That IS why I'm here in Saudi Arabia now and that fact doesn't change. Without the money that will come from my time in this job, I will have achieved nothing except yet another SPECTACULAR FAILURE in my recent life.

I HAVE to achieve something worthwhile and I have to succeed in something. Even though it is nearly two years since THAT day on August 15th 2007 when my whole world fell into the chasm – and MORE than two years since leaving the house and all in it in Pszczyna – I have done almost NOTHING which really builds up my self-confidence again. The Anti-Midas touch – everything I touch turns to MOULD.

One of the worst things you can do in life is look back thinking, “If only I had/n't done this, that and the other”. Pointless! You cannot change what you did or what happened and time machines only exist in sci-fi and HG Wells. So it helps NOTHING to say such things. Nobody can know what the decisions they make can do to them in the future. We try to do the best for ourselves but it doesn't always work out. I could look back and say, “Oh, I shouldn't have quit Krakow so easily because things could have been better now”. In some ways that is true. I am STILL getting email enquiries from people wanting to have English lessons. So THAT, together with my hours that DID increase in the end, would have put me in a better position now. But at that time my thinking was that I had to break the continual cycle of not having money and forever depending on the job I was doing to live on AND then having to borrow from my Dad all the time. Financial Independence – yes, we all want it. And I, at age 41, felt I HAD TO do something about it since I am NOT at the start of my working life but in the middle. Or maybe beyond that. And with no savings and very little in the bank and with my only asset being the Pszczyna house (which there is STILL a cloud over), I felt then that I had to do something to break the cycle happening again and again. So here I came.

BUT .... with the exception of two or three days last week I have come home every day with either a BIG headache or feeling very down or even more unsettled about it all. Every morning I seem to wake up OK. Two mornings ago I had a beautifully Utopian dream about me in a no-money-worries kind of place and everything was beautiful and just right. So THAT morning I woke up feeling happy and quite cheerful .... only to return home that evening feeling really bad and not able to sleep.

What is it that is stressing me out? Well, first of all I think I am feeling things in a more extreme way than I should. Small things feel bigger than they perhaps are. Irritations become problems, small annoyances become hair-pullers and so on. No doubt the last three months has done me no good at ALL mentally – NOT KNOWING what was happening, WHERE I was going and IF I had done the right/wrong thing in coming to England so early REALLY HASN'T done me ANY GOOD at all! And I'm going to break the rule I talked about a few paragraphs ago and say ..... I WISH I had a time machine now so I could go back in time and tell myself, “STAY IN KRAKOW! DON'T QUIT!!”. I was having a stressful time, yes. But I was somewhere I WANTED to be with people I WANTED to be with establishing a nice routine and a nice life for myself in a VERY nice place for ANYONE to be. But see what I said about the need to break the no-money cycle.

But also, it is just that I'm in a strange environment in a strange land and TOO FAR AWAY from WHERE I want to be and too far away from WHO I want to be with. And right now I have no easy access to those places or people. And there is also this awful feeling of being trapped here in this compound and having to depend too much on others to have a normal life. If I want to go into town, I can't because it is too far and anyway I wouldn't do it alone. Food shopping too is a problem. There is a shop on this compound but it doesn't have much that is really any good. The bread is awful, the rolls artificial, the fruit and veg not worth looking at and NONE of the food here is cheap. Spent a LOT last week on food. OK, a few other things too like those plug adaptors and that stupid pillow (which will sit on that table now like a white elephant to haunt me till I leave here!). Another thing that worries me is what others have said about times when the shop has been CLOSED. WHAT THEN?? OK, there is the canteen for weekdays but maybe I don't WANT to eat there all the time. And it is AGAIN this thing of never being able to get free of the place if I have only that canteen as my source of food. Yes, maybe there IS this bus from outside our block that goes into town and brings us back. But it's hardly a walk down the road, IS IT?? More like day-release from a prison!

Anyway, in the end after this year is gone I will be thankful for the money I will have accumulated and will be able to return to my nice life in Krakow WITHOUT the money worries that plagued my life there. I WILL be able to take the risks I'd thought of like only working part-time at a language school and picking and choosing private students to suit me when and where I wanted and therefore getting known as a good native speaker in that city which people could recommend to others. THAT is something I DO plan to return to and I WILL start up that process again. But I HAVE TO go through this shit I'm enduring here to get to that point. No two ways about it – it HAS to be done.

I was thinking today about August which will be holiday when I will briefly go back to England and then go onto Poland for my holiday proper with my son. And I was thinking .... “Maybe that should be IT and I should NOT return here”. I may yet return to this thought over and over over the next few months. But I must try NOT to do such a foolish thing. How would it look? My CV would, once again, have this odd bit of teaching on which I'd have to explain why it only lasted a few months. I would make myself even LESS employable, and I cannot forget the comments made by that DoS at that other school in Krakow who said Yes, she respects that I have a lot of experience but she cannot take on someone like me who cannot stay in one job for more than a few months. NO employer likes anyone like that – not in Poland, not ANYWHERE! So it is simply NOT worth doing EVEN IF I can't stand it here.

Hmm – tell that to yourself in a few months when things might be a lot worse and your headaches might be bigger and REALLY won't go away!

No, I have to consider the so-called Bigger Picture and keep reminding myself WHY I am here and WHY I came here and WHAT it is all for. Because the answers to THOSE questions cannot be challenged. PERIOD!!

I was also thinking today about Krakow and how I managed to get by when things were really bad. And one of the most important things was that I had SOMETHING ELSE TO DO, ie, my websites. A nice diversion between morning and evening classes and an EXCELLENT way to keep myself busy and not keep an idle mind. And that was combined, later on, with my nice little phone calls and my, err, “social life” (ahh, dream, dream, .....). And I was ALSO kept busy organising myself to get from one class to another or from class to private student or to home or to the library. So I was rarely idle. Question is .... HOW to do something like that HERE? No town centre, no private students, DEFINITELY no “social life of THAT kind. Just the compound and a half hour journey by road to the nearest point of 'civilisation' (which is only a shopping mall or two anyway!). Almost no social life with other teachers, for SURE none will happen with the STUDENTS here, and there are severe penalties for any kind of other 'fun' which would be considered “normal” back home. The “delights” of compound life only extend to the swimming pool, the gym, the cafe, the exhibition downstairs from our English Department (probably only a 5-minute job!), the possibility of getting a bike and cycling round the compound area and roads. And .... err .... oh, when I get it, my internet access on my PC. Oh, and the two ..... sorry, ONE useful TV channel that I have. Well, OK, some new things to take up maybe and I might be forced to JUST to get through the day!

Speaking of my day now, it currently goes like this: wake up, shower, breakfast, walk to dept., go on internet for emails at 8am, try to find out YET AGAIN what my mobile phone settings should be on this Al Jawal (without success of course!), try and AGAIN FAIL to access my emails and Skype on my phone, back to my desk, lots of tea, think AGAIN about what to do with this class when it starts, write some poetry (NEW today!), go for more tea, walk around, (eventually) go for lunch (the real HIGHLIGHT of the day – no joke! The canteen food is really GOOD!), sit at lunch and listen to others interjecting when I can or sometimes even have a conversation myself, back from lunch and then so on and so forth with the tea, internet, talks and walks.

.... and get paid for it of course! Would YOU do a job like THIS? Well, I don't feel I AM doing a job and don't feel very useful or positive.

Nothing else much interesting to write about so I'll end here.


Friday 27th March 2009
So .... another weekend is over (well, the second proper one since arrival), and on to another week at this workplace.

I use “work”place in its loosest sense since I'm yet to do anything that resembles work and CERTAINLY nothing teaching-related. Ah, not quite true – I have received the coursebook I am to use with the soldier boys until mid-August when Ramadan arrives. And this is no joke – the book in question is called “Up And Away Book 1” and it is intended for CHILDREN of about 7 or 8 years.

The philosophy behind this is two-fold by the HoD. Firstly, the basis of the course is that these soldiers or cadets or whatever they are are supposed to be the LOWEST of the low in language levels. REAL beginners as I'm led to believe. And without motivation too, it seems. The HoD has said he expects nothing from them and fully expects a dramatic failure of the course and that NONE of them will successfully learn anything. “So nothing is expected of you and it will not reflect on you if they fail!”, he says.

I have NEVER heard such a thing before from any HoD or DoS and never expect to. His strategy seems to be to put the military people off holding any such courses again. After all, the main aim of what we do here is to teach the medics-to-be and not be pushed sideways into a different kind of course.

I can see it both ways. Firstly, why would the soldiers NOT be learning English? It is an international language and since they are likely to encounter Americans and the like in the field of operation, then they surely need the basics at least. But, on the other hand, it is also a case of “jobs for the boys” as the HoD calls it. In other words, we as teachers are “babysitting” and it is merely something for bored soldiers to do during their day.

Anyway, this aside, there is STILL no firm information as to WHEN this is to begin. The latest “rumour” is Tuesday this week. And, in Saudi terms that is the equivalent of beginning on a Thursday. But that might not happen and it may well go into the week after.

This has been frustrating. I am here and yet I have nothing to do. Paid or not, I don't like to be bored.

A new teacher arrived last week. He and I are due to have these soldier boys from whenever it is. He seems like a good bloke, and it is good to FINALLY have someone in the same boat to me – here doing nothing. A fairly laid-back character he is. At first, it irritated me since I just wanted to get going and all he could say was, “Never mind, just relax!”, which I couldn't do. But he is alright. A friendly, affable sort of chap, and in fact he and I went into the local town, Khobar, yesterday and it was a good day I'd say. Well, that is if you think that spending your time in and around one of many shopping malls that are about ALL there is to do here at leisure time. Yes, here I am enjoying my weekend time looking at laptops and exploring the “delights” of the first of quite a few local shopping malls here. Sad, isn't it! What would YOU be doing? Well, no doubt your weekends have been spent out with friends, down the local market, having coffee and cakes in your town centre ..... and just doing the normal things that I WISH I WAS DOING!!

Anyway, in the context of what we have here, Thursday was a good day. Of course, being so far out, it was necessary to take a taxi into town. So myself and the new guy did just that. Got there around mid-morning. I had my 'shopping list' and he wanted to look at laptops which apparently were at good prices in this particular shopping mall in Khobar. Well, it was something to do! Also in that hypermarket were a number of other electrical items for kitchen etc. so it was useful to see what they had and compare prices to the UK. The only thing that I saw of interest was a sandwich toaster. But as the bread here is not good, I don't think I'll bother.

Looked at the laptops. A couple of them were at pretty good prices considering the spec they had. Quite an eye opener actually! I had been thinking that I would buy my next one back in the UK, but now I'm not sure. Well, they all had Windows Vista and English/Arabic keyboards. Maybe, maybe not.

Decided to get food later. Went out to the coffee shop for a nice ice latte. Were sitting down enjoying it. Now, here in Saudi you have to plan what you do by prayer times lest you should get caught in 'mid-shop' and quite possibly be locked in. Now, I had thought that today's prayer time was around 11.15am but nothing happened to my surprise. Maybe they don't do it in these larger shopping malls. Well that unfortunately was not the case! There we were sitting with our drinks in nice, comfy armchairs when .... yes, you've guessed it .... 11.45 came and the Call To Prayer rang out on the loudspeakers. That was it, the shutters were coming down on the coffee shop and OUT we had to go! Ah well, was a comfortable 10 minutes I guess!

The whole place seemed to empty as if it were 7pm on a weekday in a UK shopping centre. All we could do was find some place to sit and talk for a while. The main shopping mall doors were not locked but all shops WERE closed. Well, they might as well have locked it all up except that there were a few guys left sweeping up and a couple of guys were drilling at something nearby.

One guy seemed not to be sweeping up much. More often than not he seemed to be skulking around quietly and more than a few times was stood behind us most likely listening in. We were just talking – about Poland (he'd been in and around Warsaw in 1991 and had a few tales to tell!) and about assorted other things. Nothing dangerous, nothing inflamatory, nothing to bring down a nation. But here you can't be sure who people are and what they hear and don't hear.

OK, after an hour or so things started opening up again. By now it was around 1pm. We found a toilet (and they had some squat toilets together with normal ones) and then went back to the hypermarket before (the one with the laptops). BUT, to our dismay, they were due to close at 2pm and then reopen at around 4pm. So all we could do was buzz round doing our shopping for the week and then go back in the taxi home.

Although it was good to get out of the compound, looking back it wasn't much of an 'outing'. A couple of hours downtown and that was it. To be fair, I did enjoy it. Just to see a bit of new scenery. Believe me, it counts a LOT here in “compound land”. The thing is, you HAVE to take these chances to get out and do something – otherwise you rot away in your room.

I made one useful purchase – another flash drive. A very good price too. I will use it from now on for school use AND, more importantly, I will NOW be able to transfer all this (my diary) from here in my laptop to my blog. Cos I'm not just writing to myself here! REALLY I'm not!

The rest of that Thursday was spent in my room and in the canteen for lunch/dinner. Again I have to say how much I enjoy the meals here. Weekends are more of an 'a la carte' affair – you go in, there is a “weekend menu”, you choose what you want, pay, and it comes to you a bit later. And very nice it is too! Who says hospital food is bad!

SURVIVAL – that's the name of the game here. Weekday survival will revolve around drinking lots of that very nice tea I was given by one of our female teaching colleagues. That together with some poetry writing I've got done. And as many chats as possible. Oh, and many visits to the “internet computer” for email, news, surf and whatever I can think of. On Wednesday I had a look at 'Gumtree Krakow' to see if there were many ads wanting native speaker teachers. And indeed there WERE! VERY encouraging. More encouraging were the accommodation rent prices that I saw on the Polish website which is the equivalent of EasyRoomMate.com, and looking at those made me think ahead to my eventual 'release' from here and what I will return to AND how I will better plan things BEFORE I get to Krakow next time. Because I can see now that, with advance planning, it for sure IS possible to get a nice set of private students by advertising myself in advance of being there. In other words, not just go there “cold” and try to start from scratch.

The question of just HOW long I will stay here is one that will follow me all the way to the end. One important feeling is that I DO want to resume my “life interrupted” in Krakow. Being here is a means to an end and there is a financial goal to my Saudi time. But HOW LONG would be a good amount of time to stay? And would I be able to come back again later either to this place I'm in now or to some other place in the Middle East. And, indeed, would I WANT TO come back for “second helpings”? For this is not the way I want to live out here. Yes, being here is for work purposes only, but I cannot stop time and cannot resume what has been too long ago. In a place like Krakow, it is important to get a 'foothold' on the place so that you get known and so, by word of mouth, you can get that nice set of private students and therefore be comfortable and not dependent too much on any language school. My idea would be to have a number of “core hours” of language school work together with my own private students. And with the Saudi money it would not be a big stress if I was down with not as much work as I wanted. Yes, that was a big problem there – not having any kind of “backup money” meant that if I didn't have the students then I didn't have the money. And then that would stress me out and I simply couldn't enjoy my time there and couldn't, for example, go to the cinema and have any kind of social and normal life.

Being here is, in my opinion, what you do when you have little else to go back for. THEN, yes, you COULD easily spend the five or ten years here that many of these guys have done and it would make more sense. And then it wouldn't matter so much if you had little to do because your one and only aim was to make money either for retirement or for a nice little nest-egg to have a comfy life.

Well .... it seems to be a feature of this 'diary' so far that I write little about what I am doing and more about what I am thinking. But isn't that what a diary/blog is? I will look back on this in months to come and see how things progress. For now, it's goodbye, good night, and here comes another week of ..... ?? Can you wait?