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?

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!