The Return of Monitor Man (or IS IT?)

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!

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 ….

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!

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!

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?