To Be Paid .... And Other Stories

Sunday 29th March 2009
So then .... this will probably be the last entry for Month 1 in Saudi Arabia. Well, it was only half a month but still it counts.

Should be getting paid soon. But, as always, the process of getting my hands on the cheque (which is how I'll be paid for this month and the next two) is not so simple.

So, not to go too much into the procedure, what I had to do is “simply” to go over to the Finance Department where the cheque would be waiting. Sounded simple, didn't it? So that's what I did and found the desk of the guy whose job it was to hand these things out. And sure enough he had a big wad of cheques in his hand for distribution. Asked for my Employee Number and I gave it. Flick Flick Search Search .... no, sorry, go see the guy over there cos you're a new employee. Did that. He had a smaller wad of cheques. But no. Nothing. Somebody, somewhere hadn't signed it or authorised it yet. Ah well, we could come back later .... did that and the same result. Don't worry, they said, we will phone your office when we have it ready. Well, I had hoped to get the cheque and then go downtown to cash it – same situation for me and the other new guy. Anyway, even when we went back after lunch to try to get it there was STILL no cheque and it STILL hadn't been authorised/written/stamped/signed/sealed/..... yet.

Anyway, this was only today. Actually today the weather was much more humid than normal and made things more difficult like getting around the compound. Temperatures which previously were OK were TODAY a bigger problem. I think I started to see today what the summer is likely to be like. Not too much humidity please!

Let's go back to yesterday. Woke up Saturday morning with the left-ear blockage which I've had every now and then for the past few years. Actually it started the night before. Mysterious because I don't think I'd had much water in my ears which is usually the cause. Trouble is, when I get this I put my finger(s) in my ear to try to open it up to clear the blockage and wiggling fingers about inside ear for a time only makes it worse. But I dso it because usually it clears quickly. Not today though!

Fortunately I work here in a hospital compound so help was not far away. Went to the office to sign in and asked if I could go to the medical centre to get it sorted, and it was OK to go. Now, if you've never had this kind of thing before, then let me tell you what it is like. Half your head is missing and your world retreats into the other half. There is no world outside that environment because all you can hear is what your right ear tells you about which is all unreal anyway because it doesn't feel right. If this carries on the whole day then a big, nasty headache is the result by the end of the day. And if, by chance, you have to teach or communicate with many people as part of your day ..... then your day is a wasted and very stressful and headache-ridden one. THAT is what it is like!

Fortunately (and this is the ONLY time I was glad NOT to have classes) I was class-free still. I had been informed that my one three-times-a-week-and-five-days-a-week class of soldier boys was now really not going to start for another TWO WEEKS (did I tell you this already?). So .... two more weeks of sitting on ass with books, drinking tea and generally doing nothing! Is this going to turn out to be the least active year of my life? Looks that way!

OK, so after I had been in with the doctor and he had had a look in my ear (apparently I have a very interesting inner left ear, but he didn't say why!), he just gave me a prescription for some pills. “Probably this is because of your flight and the blockage that this sometimes causes in people”, he declared. Hmmm, OK ..... but that was TWO WEEKS AGO! Ah well, no ear-syringe or ear-waxing was going to get done here. So he gave me a prescription which I had to take to the hospital pharmacy.

Oh, and my White Card was needed. This is the thing I need to produce to show I work here in order to get medical help here. All I've had till now was my White Piece-of-Paper with health details on because the Medical Centre hadn't been able to make me a White Card when I first went there. So I had to go see Personnel / go see Hospital Admin / go see .... somebody else in some other office. Well I have looked for this office for two days now with no joy. I just can't be bothered to waste my time wandering around finding the place. Yup, another lot of wandering around looking for the needle in the haystack.

My mood the last two days has darkened again. I guess because of my ear problem combined with the humidity combined with the extra boredom of an extra two-week wait for it all to begin. At the end of last week I thought I had a strategy worked out for survival but this 'plan' just wasn't working out today or yesterday.

So after two days I and the other new guy decided to go over check out the Recreation Centre. From the outside it doesn't look much, and I'd had a look inside before and it didn't seem to have much in it. A restaurant/bar which never opened, swimming pool next door and that is all I saw before. Ah but THIS TIME we saw the whole thing. And it really is GOOD! Two weights rooms, a four-lane ten-pin bowling alley, a small cafe-bar. DEFINITELY ways to spend time after work and at weekends. And it is free to join – one form to fill in and I guess I'd better get a timetable of when the various parts of it are open to us men. And indeed the general opening and closing hours. It is looking like a place where I could well be spending a fair bit of my leisure time over the next months.

There is another gym but it is only a sports hall and so not much use to me. It is the one which is just over the road from my block. The one I saw on Day 1.

OK, well not much to write about today – just about my ear troubles, money-getting annoyances and yes – I HAVE ended on some positivity with the Rec Centre and what it has.

Hopefully tomorrow we can get our cheques and then go into town, cash them and then have a bit of time down there away from the dullness of the office.

Catch you soon/next month!