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 ….