Saturday 20th February 2010
Let's start with a quotation today - “It's weird...you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second … just so it can hurt a little more." (author unknown). To qualify this a little, let's say that the meaning of “great” that is best here is “large and/or imposing”.
I think this sums up a large part of how I feel today, Saturday 20th February 2010 – the day on which (at around 2am tomorrow morning) my plane will leave the ground and take me out of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the last time.
So … this is IT!
The day I have waited for, the day I have needed to come for ohh so long now.
At around 9pm tonight the transportation boys will come and take me, my two large cases and backpack to Dammam Airport, will then drop me off, probably shake hands and then say goodbyes.
What about THAT! I will be saying goodbye to people I have never met before and THESE people will be the last people from within the walls of this compound that will see me off back to the UK. An anonymous farewell!
Appropriate in a way I suppose, and maybe it is better this way. I arrived anonymous back in mid-March 2009 and I will leave that way too. And I am not one for long goodbyes. Keep em short and sweet otherwise they will never end and you will feel you can't break away after all.
And after all, I AM returning to anonymity since I will be starting again sometime, I suppose, in autumn 2010 in, quite possibly, a new country, new life and new experiences to come. Anonymity will follow me from Dammam Airport right up to wherever I happen to end up.
“Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous,” - Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, USA said once. He is, you can note, not a well-known person and yet he makes an excellent point on this topic. Being anonymous is NOT such a great thing since as well as being alone, you have nobody who knows what you can do or what you are capable of. When I get back to London early next morning, that is as good as it will be. Yes, I know a few people by sight around where my mother lives but it is not a place I am in regularly. Few people, I can be sure, know who I am and know where I have been this last year, and why should they even CARE about it? Well, no reason of course. I will not be around there long enough for it to matter and I definitely have no plans to return to live and work in London or indeed ANY part of the UK. It WILL be another overseas “adventure”, though DEFINITELY not as far as Saudi Arabia again. I'll be keeping to mainland Europe thank you very much!
Catherine Deneuve, famous French actress, said once, “I like being famous when it's convenient for me and completely anonymous when it's not”. In my line of work, English teaching, being “famous” refers to the classroom and to the students who know you and know what you do there. Yes, you may also meet and socialise with them outside, but when you step outside your classroom and your place of work and move on to another place, you really ARE the second of those. Perhaps American actress, Alison Lohman said it better - “Obviously you don't want to be anonymous, but you don't want everyone to know your life. ”
What, I ask myself, have I actually achieved this year in the desert? Have I advanced and/or developed as a person, as a human being? Am I a better person than I was one year ago?
And what IS success or failure anyway?? I'm sure I don't know, but Bill Cosby, famous American actor said, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody". Well, I don't try and do THAT – as a teacher it is as good as impossible ESPECIALLY when your class is 30 students in number as it was at the end. And I did not try to please them all anyway. Teaching does not have to ”please” people to help them learn. Thee are those who enjoy what you do and those who are 50-50 and those who do not. For the first of those groups you can say you HAVE achieved success, for the middle group it is “could be better”, and the last group probably gave up on the whole learning thing long ago anyway. There ARE those in TEFL circles who say you SHOULD be able to involve and inspire EVERY learner in your classroom. And theory is a wonderful thing, isn't it?
Ach anyway – today is the day I cease to be a teacher and return to being a “nobody” as far as job status goes. That will not last long and I am sure I will be back in the swing of things come September 2010 or earlier.
Beginnings … they are always hard and this is one thing that REALLY bugs me about this job I do. We, as TEFL teachers are always moving on, always saying goodbye, never in one place for long enough to call it “home”. Whereas some years ago this did not matter much, it is something now that REALLY unsettles me. I don't like endings and I ESPECIALLY don't like new beginnings with all that there is as far as re-establishing yourself in the English language learning community I find myself in. Oh yes, there are many positives too – you get to meet a whole lot of new people and there are new experiences a-plenty. And that is a GOOD thing, a VERY good thing!
"The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy." - so said English novelist and playwright, John Galsworthy. Ohh, how right he was! When he says “untidy”, perhaps he means more emotionally so than in any other way because that is the hardest thing especially if the “endings” are done in a hurry or earlier than you'd like. That was how it was when moving on from my previous teaching job in Krakow, Poland to here in Saudi Arabia.
I do look back and wonder what would have been if I HAD stayed there after all. One thing IS for sure – I would STILL be in the financial problem area that existed back then. Nothing HUGE you understand, but big enough to be a burden that would have NOT gone away if I'd not come here. So for THAT, I AM glad I came to this country. I had a problem, and now that problem is solved leaving me a nice “breathing space” and room to move again.
But of course, money is not the whole of life and nor is work. What about THIS quote from Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur - “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time”. VERY much applies to me here. Yes, I have had the benefit of the money, but I feel MORE that time has been lost and that a year of my life has drifted by without achieving anything else. One of the reasons why I would not stay here any longer – I am simply NOT prepared to put my life on hold life this just for the sake of an enhanced bank balance. No, I am not old, but I am not so young either and there is more I want to do than just EARN.
OK, I have just come back after lunch. The LAST lunchtime, of course, that I will spend in that hospital canteen / cafeteria. Today I had the beef with lots of cucumber slices, tomato slices and green pepper slices on top. And a couple of bottles of that nice Danone yoghurt-milk drink (not, NOT laban this time).
So … back to my “Leaving Speech”. Well, as I was saying before lunch, I am glad that I will be returning to what I am “used to”. This is not the same thing as “home” for THAT is another thing whose definition is hard to put my finger on.
Home is, as many people say, where the heart is. Or it is “wherever I lay my hat”, or other such things. German author and poet, Christian Morganstern, said, “Home is not where you live, but where they understand you”. And THAT is a tricky one to pinpoint. One thing is for sure though – with THAT definition of 'home', I KNOW it is not HERE in this country and could NEVER BE! Trouble is, WHERE IS IT? I also do not think my 'home' these days is back in the UK since I have been away from it as a regular resident since 1995 now and both it and I have changed much and, I often feel, grown apart. So that leaves Poland which HAS been my home and workplace for just about all of these fifteen years. However, there are even problems THERE these days (but those are not the subject of this blog). So being “released” from here does not necessarily mean I am going “home” but just back to somewhere more familiar. Lois McMaster Bujold, an American sci-fi and fantasy author said about home, “My home is not a place, it is people.” and I have to agree with her. In England are parents and in London my son, and they ARE people I want to be with, but in addition there are those there I do NOT wish to be with. In Poland there is the house, but again I am not sure about the people who live around it. Doesn't leave much, does it?
Yeah, a complex thing is “home”. But not half as complex as WORK. Ohh, check out this BRILLIANT quote from William Faulkner, Nobel-Prize winning American author - “It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work”. I just LOVE that! Well, I've known a good few men who actually COULD drink for eight hours in a day, and perhaps there are some people out HERE who could eat for that long. But the idea of it is GREAT! Just how DO we endure this thing called “work” for so long every day? Well, “Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction”, so said Anne Frank, that famous WW2 diarist.
Yes, she is right – work SHOULD be satisfying or else why do it? And I DO find teaching, on the whole, a very satisfying job to do because when you work with PEOPLE as opposed to machines, you see HUMAN reward and not just an error-free run. And after all, “Nothing will work unless you do”, according to Maya Angelou, American writer and poet.
As enjoyable as teaching is, it IS only work and it is NOT life. “The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life”, so said Charles Schwab, leading American businessman. Well, I do not have the wealth that HE does and never will, so in a way this is a rather ironic quote from such a wealthy man. But taken in isolation, it makes a very good point.
I asked the question earlier – how has being out here for the year helped me in my working life? I mean, from a career point of view and/or for what it does to my CV. Well, at the start of the year I thought it would serve me very WELL being out here in a different work environment teaching a different type of student for a while. Would look really GOOD on my CV, I thought, for any future employer to see that I Had been out here.
Now I am not so sure. I have seen the type of teachers who come out here, and of course I know only too WELL the type of students here and, sadly, the kind of institution they come to for their learning. While it will be, no doubt, a nice talking point on my CV for any future workplace, I really don't know what being here has added to my skills and knowledge “tool bag”. Was I able to try out new ideas? Not really. Did I do something different here that I hadn't done before? Well, YES I did actually – I had to make up a whole 18-week English course as I went along with the soldier boys since there was no credible coursebook and certainly NO resource materials I could refer to. All I had was my colleague, the DutchBrit who was doing HIS class in a similar way and the few “hints and tips” given along the way every now and then by other teaching colleagues who took an interest. And then, as we ALL KNOW, it was all for NOTHING at the end so whether ANY of it was of ANY VALUE at ALL is debatable.
What I fear is the reputation of places like this being a kind of “teachers' graveyard” - the place all good teachers go to when nobody else will take them on. Well, don't be so cynical now! I am, at age 42, the YOUNGEST of the teachers in the English department. What does THAT say?? Exactly! I think you see my point. The others have been here for MANY more years and they seem content or happy to continue here. Do they actually LIKE it here? I think with them it is not a question of liking the job or not but more a case that it is EASIER to stay than to go.
Yes, if you are able to keep your head down, if you can shut off the absurdity of it all, if you can just come in, do the job and go home without troubling your conscience, then for SURE you can make it out here. Everyone needs a Survival Strategy here, and you have to develop one. For one colleague, it is to always be planning and thinking about his next holiday. It works for him, but in my opinion is NO WAY to live your life! A couple of other older colleagues have only a year or two to retirement age so they are content to stick it out till then because, for them, it “isn't that long” to go. Well, what's a couple of years when you're in your 60's, eh!
But there ARE stories of teachers who have NOT bee able to cope. The most famous of these (true or not I don't know) is the story of one guy who totally FLIPPED one day, chopped up all the furniture in his room with an axe or something and then, so the story goes, ran out and ran down the road totally NAKED! And I mentioned the guy who TWICE ran away down the Causeway to Bahrain only to be “lured back” as his skills and knowledge were in need. There is also a story about a teacher not long ago, in his late 60's I think, who HATED the students so much that he got into a shouting and swearing fit one day in class with them. Unfortunately for him, one student recorded the whole thing on his mobile phone and he was dismissed from the job shortly afterwards. And there are odd little stories you hear of minor things that didn't actually get a teacher sacked but COULD have caused him more trouble had he been staying longer. AmericanMan himself somehow was lured into doing some kind of “mock prayer” in the classroom and THAT got reported. Ahh, and what about the teacher I referred to before as “pervert man” who, for some reason did a kind of dance in front of the class and – yes, somebody videoed him on their mobile phone and it was reported to the bosses upstairs!
Make no mistake – you HAVE to have your wits about you here at all times. If you let your guard slip, and say or do something that you SHOUDLN'T, then just HOPE nobody dislikes you enough to make a big deal of it! I myself let a few unguarded comments out at times only to realise what I'd said too late. Luckily nothing came of them as far as I know.
Whatever anyone else may say, it IS a hard place to live and it IS a hard place to work. If, as a teacher, you have any principles on HOW teaching should be and WHAT you should do in class and not do, then FORGET IT! Working here is unlike ANY OTHER teaching experience you will ever be in! OK, it is not ALL doom and gloom, and along the way you WILL have successes and some high points. But they will be few and far between and, in any case, there will be so much SHIT in between that you will hardly notice them. In my case, the first half of my time here was a complete NIGHTMARE and the second half MUCH better though still with many frustrations and annoyances. Thankfully that second half WAS a great improvement on the first, but by the time it arrived I had had MORE than enough and the Exit Plan was already in mind. The soldier boy experience was SO BAD that I even considered for a moment NOT coming back at ALL. But I realised that if I did THAT, then it would leave a BIG hole in the CV which would need explaining for years to come. And I would not have the money benefit that I HAVE had. Endurance was the key there.
“Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance”, Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), a classical Roman poet said many, many years ago.
Well, I think I have done that! So … what is next?
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Friday, 19 February 2010
Oh I forgot to Tell You! Check THIS out ...
Friday 19th February 2010
Now then – there are one or two things I'd like to put in this blog today. And these are things that, for some reason or other, I forgot to put in earlier editions. Call it forgetfulness, call it what you like but anyway HERE are a few things that, on this penultimate day here in Saudi Arabia, I REALLY should put down in writing.
The first of these will make you laugh. Well, I wasn't laughing too much MYSELF at the time, but if you had witnessed it as my DutchBrit colleague did then it is not something you can forget.
It involves a drink they call here “laban”. And what IS this, “laban”, I hear you ask. Well it is basically a soured yoghurt-milk drink. Do you know what the “Activia” yoghurt-milk drink is? Well, laban is a bit like that. You don't pour it on your cereal and you certainly DON'T put it in your cup of tea or coffee. It is for drinking only. I suppose there could be fruity versions if you don't like the taste of the stuff on its own. Oh, and it comes in rather small bottles. The basic recipe is surprisingly basic and you can see it here http://www.answers.com/topic/laban-drink
I had never tried it much before here, but now I really like it. But there is something to know about it – the way to open it. What you need to do is (1) give the bottle a shake, (2) unscrew the lid, and (3) peel off the silver foil lid. (1), (2) and (3) in THAT order – got it?
Now you're scratching your head and wondering what on earth I'm doing reminding you of something you may never have had in your life. Well, it was on this day, shortly before the summer holidays last year, when I myself got the sequence hopelessly wrong with disastrous and comical results.
How or why I did it I will never know. There I was. It was just after lunchtime and always at lunchtime in the hospital cafeteria I got two bottles of laban – one for lunchtime itself and the second one for later. I had this second bottle now.
I had to prepare a bit because I had this summer course class to do one lesson for. It wasn't originally my class, but the teacher who WAS supposed to do it had wimped off with the pathetic excuse of having a stomach bug through some dodgy meal last night out on the town. Total rubbish if you ask me – he just couldn't be bothered to do this class today. So I was sitting at my desk thinking what to do and shuffling a few papers round getting things together. Hmm, I thought, let's have that laban now. So I got it, shook the bottle, unscrewed the lid and peeled off the foil lid.
Then for some reason I put that bottle down on the desk to my right without drinking it. Perhaps I'd had a flash of inspiration or got distracted or something – I don't remember. And then in another moment later I decided I wanted to drink it. I picked up the bottle and gave it a GOOD SHAKE.
NO LID!! The stuff went ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE – mostly all over me. Ohh, it was all over my glasses and face and I had well-splattered myself all down my grey shirt. Some had gone on my bag and some on the floor and some splats had even gone behind me and onto the floor behind me!!
Oh My GOD, I thought, and sat there for a moment. What the HELL did I just do? There was laughter from behind me, and the DutchBrit who was acting Head of Department during that summer period had seen it all. He had looked up JUST at the very moment I had shaken this stuff all over myself.
SHIT! I had this lesson in about 20 minutes time! Had to try clean myself up. I had tissues from somewhere and began the mopping-up process. Cleaned face and glasses first. Didn't bother about the floor. Dabbed the splats off my bag. Some laban had splatted over some grammar books and resource material folders that were open on my desk and so I made sure to clean those up too. Hoped it wouldn't end up too sticky.
Now to my shirt. It was THIS that had suffered the most, and the shirt in question was NOT a cotton shirt which was easily cleanable. Even when I tried to wipe up and soak up the blobs and splats of laban with copious amounts of tissue, the fatty stains were STILL THERE.
I was not doing well. Time was ticking away to the start of the lesson upstairs. Would I be able to go up there and stand there with a shirt with laban splat marks all over it. Well, the whiteness of the laban had gone but the dark marks were all over me. I did not much know what to do.
Well, I had to go do the lesson. The department secretary suggested I go borrow a jacket to cover this. It was either this or send the other available colleague up in my place. First I thought THAT was what I had to do, and he didn't look pleased.
Then he suggested I borrow his denim shirt-jacket. YES! I was SAVED! It just about fitted me, so on it went and I collected my pens, books and papers and up to the lesson I went. The shirt was covered up and I was REPRIEVED!
The students asked me why I was wearing this jacket and I did tell them. Not sure if they understood.
Now I make GOOD SURE that when I SHAKE a bottle of ANYTHING that I have one finger over the lid JUST IN CASE …
OK, that is the first thing to tell you. The second thing happened, I think, just before Christmas. Or maybe just after – I don't remember for sure, but it was when I had to go down to the Rashid Mall once again to the boys at Mobily to pay for another internet month (or maybe to pay AGAIN cos I'd run out or something).
I suppose I'd finished in Mobily because I was upstairs in the coffee bar I always go to there. It is called, “Seattle's Best”, in the Rashid Mall by the way. Nice coffee and I used to enjoy the caramel cakes till they stopped having them. Anyway, they have nice coffee and some nice and VERY comfortable chairs in the corner which are PERFECT for lazing around in for a while.
Prayer time came around. What normally happens during prayer times here is that you cannot buy anything but they don't normally insist you get out. You CAN stay sitting there. So although nobody is there working and serving customers, if you are already INSIDE, you can STAY INSIDE. If you want to leave, you can also do so or in shops and supermarkets you have to wait until they open up again, ie, a lock-in situation. It varies slightly from place to place but this is generally the way here.
Anyway, prayer time was here, the usual wailing sounds of the Call To Prayer filled the shopping mall and the lights went off in this coffee bar. I remained sitting there as I always do as did a number of other Saudis. I was sitting in the back of the coffee bar but there were many Saudis sitting together talking and drinking in the chairs at the front.
As I was sitting there minding my own business and watching people go by, I saw one or two Saudi policemen going by. Funny, I thought, what are THEY doing here?
Now, I had heard that in Rashid Mall there ARE often 'muttawah' who roam around at prayer times making sure places are closed and that Muslims get off their behinds and get IN to the mosques and PRAY! Yes, shock, horror, probe! Even HERE they do not RUSH into the mosque at the moment of the Call! I do not know how it works at prayer times – maybe they do not have to go EXACTLY at Prayer Time moment but can go a little while later. Well, you do not EVER see them rushing en-masse to the mosques so maybe there is some 'leeway' involved. But they DO have to go sometime though it can be a matter of group or peer pressure at times.
So there were policemen going around which I thought strange. And then to my right and outside the coffee bar a red-checked “ghutra” wearing man came by. He didn't have a particularly long beard. He stopped by the first two Saudis sitting there, spoke to them a bit and then they got up to go. He then moved on down to the second table and spoke to the second lot of Saudis there. THAT discussion proved to be longer and they needed much more “persuasion” but eventually then went too.
So only I was left it seemed – sitting there, lights out drinking my coffee and wondering what was to happen next. And then at the entrance to this coffee bar I saw a policeman come and stand there looking in my direction. I did not catch his eye though I knew he was there and I did not move either. And then the muttawah man came in.
Now, I have heard much of these muttawah and how nasty they are. There are stories galore online about them in years gone by of how they go about with their bamboo canes beating women in the streets for showing “too much”. Our HoD told a story once of a time 30 years ago (I think he said) when an American couple he knew were out and about in town in the marketplace somewhere and how, at prayer time, they had been chased out by a mutawah who followed them whipping their heels with his bamboo cane as they went.
So there I am sitting there and in comes the mutawah. “Hello, how are you?”, he started. “What nationality are you?”, to which I replied I was an Englishman. He then went on to explain that at prayer times people are not permitted to sit in or wait in coffee bars or shops because that was “the Saudi culture”.
Well, obviously he wanted me to leave, and so I duly went out with my unfinished coffee and went to sit on the benches outside the coffee bar to drink up. Another mutawah man was still arguing with one more Saudi pair who were still sitting inside. Eventually they DID leave and I saw their rather sheepish faces as they came out “defeated”.
“In days gone by you'd have had a bamboo cane in your face!”, I was told later back at college by more knowledgeable colleagues. Well, I was quite glad of that!
So what and who are the mutawah? Well, basically they are the “religious police” here. Officially they are the “Department of Vice and Virtue ” and so their task is to make sure people are “doing the right thing” I suppose.
They are not “police” as such and do not have the power of arrest by themselves. This is why they always go around WITH the Saudi police. But here's the thing – the police are only necessary for FOREIGNERS because the Saudis themselves treat them with great respect. And the fact that FIRST they clear out the Saudis, then they go away and come BACK with the police for the foreigners just shows you what little they can do.
As I said, they used to be REALLY nasty pieces of work. But recently, I am told, they have been told that they have to “be nice to people”. Maybe the Saudi hierarchy are aware that their reputation is not a good one and want to do something about it. Or maybe, more truthfully, the days of the mutawah are numbered in Saudi Arabia.
I do not think they have mutawah in other Arab countries though I may be wrong. On this website http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Mutawa they define mutawah as those whose job it is to keep people to a “strict code of conduct” which, of course, means in accordance with Islamic law.
However – here's a strange thing – in the soldier boy class days, they used the word 'mutawah' in a different way. One man in the other military class was termed a 'mutawah' although clearly he was not one though did have some kind of authoritative presence. And indeed, one way to describe another DIFFERENT student was to call HIM a 'mutawah' because he was bearded (though not a long beard at all!). So perhaps the term, “muttawah”, means something along the lines of “the pure one” since it is definitely encouraged for Muslims to grow beards. Some kind of sign of 'manliness' I think.
So THAT was my one and only encounter with mutawa in Saudi Arabia. Well, you see around many long straggly-bearded men who may or may not be genuine mutawah. Around the compound there WERE some once, and on that day the hospital cafeteria cash tills “magically” had signs directing men to Till A and women to Till B. But the signs disappeared a few days later.
Their strictness has been tempered these days. It may turn out to be, in many MANY years in the future, that there will NOT BE mutawah in this country any more. Or maybe only in the bigger cities like Riyadh or Jeddah. What authority do they have these days? Well, THAT is unclear, though what IS clear is that they are not what they used to be. And that is ONLY a good thing!
OK, that's the end of that. Well, I just wanted to tell you about those two incidents. Two things I felt could NOT be left out of the blog since they are important.
Oh, one more thing on the mutawah day. I came of the Rashid Mall with my shopping to the place where I normally wait for the taxi. And something new HERE! The POLICE were here! Yes, a police car drew up and shooed away all the taxis that were waiting there. Well, strictly speaking that spot is not for taxis or, indeed, for ANY cars to be waiting in. I was a little nervous that I wouldn't be able to take my taxi or that I would be reprimanded for waiting here for a taxi or even that the taxi driver would have problems. Ah, but LUCKILY as my taxi came, the police were a little way further up hassling a taxi driver there. So I quickly got in and we drove off before they could see us!
Two things in ONE DAY I'd not seen before – mutawah AND police!
Now then – there are one or two things I'd like to put in this blog today. And these are things that, for some reason or other, I forgot to put in earlier editions. Call it forgetfulness, call it what you like but anyway HERE are a few things that, on this penultimate day here in Saudi Arabia, I REALLY should put down in writing.
The first of these will make you laugh. Well, I wasn't laughing too much MYSELF at the time, but if you had witnessed it as my DutchBrit colleague did then it is not something you can forget.
It involves a drink they call here “laban”. And what IS this, “laban”, I hear you ask. Well it is basically a soured yoghurt-milk drink. Do you know what the “Activia” yoghurt-milk drink is? Well, laban is a bit like that. You don't pour it on your cereal and you certainly DON'T put it in your cup of tea or coffee. It is for drinking only. I suppose there could be fruity versions if you don't like the taste of the stuff on its own. Oh, and it comes in rather small bottles. The basic recipe is surprisingly basic and you can see it here http://www.answers.com/topic/laban-drink
I had never tried it much before here, but now I really like it. But there is something to know about it – the way to open it. What you need to do is (1) give the bottle a shake, (2) unscrew the lid, and (3) peel off the silver foil lid. (1), (2) and (3) in THAT order – got it?
Now you're scratching your head and wondering what on earth I'm doing reminding you of something you may never have had in your life. Well, it was on this day, shortly before the summer holidays last year, when I myself got the sequence hopelessly wrong with disastrous and comical results.
How or why I did it I will never know. There I was. It was just after lunchtime and always at lunchtime in the hospital cafeteria I got two bottles of laban – one for lunchtime itself and the second one for later. I had this second bottle now.
I had to prepare a bit because I had this summer course class to do one lesson for. It wasn't originally my class, but the teacher who WAS supposed to do it had wimped off with the pathetic excuse of having a stomach bug through some dodgy meal last night out on the town. Total rubbish if you ask me – he just couldn't be bothered to do this class today. So I was sitting at my desk thinking what to do and shuffling a few papers round getting things together. Hmm, I thought, let's have that laban now. So I got it, shook the bottle, unscrewed the lid and peeled off the foil lid.
Then for some reason I put that bottle down on the desk to my right without drinking it. Perhaps I'd had a flash of inspiration or got distracted or something – I don't remember. And then in another moment later I decided I wanted to drink it. I picked up the bottle and gave it a GOOD SHAKE.
NO LID!! The stuff went ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE – mostly all over me. Ohh, it was all over my glasses and face and I had well-splattered myself all down my grey shirt. Some had gone on my bag and some on the floor and some splats had even gone behind me and onto the floor behind me!!
Oh My GOD, I thought, and sat there for a moment. What the HELL did I just do? There was laughter from behind me, and the DutchBrit who was acting Head of Department during that summer period had seen it all. He had looked up JUST at the very moment I had shaken this stuff all over myself.
SHIT! I had this lesson in about 20 minutes time! Had to try clean myself up. I had tissues from somewhere and began the mopping-up process. Cleaned face and glasses first. Didn't bother about the floor. Dabbed the splats off my bag. Some laban had splatted over some grammar books and resource material folders that were open on my desk and so I made sure to clean those up too. Hoped it wouldn't end up too sticky.
Now to my shirt. It was THIS that had suffered the most, and the shirt in question was NOT a cotton shirt which was easily cleanable. Even when I tried to wipe up and soak up the blobs and splats of laban with copious amounts of tissue, the fatty stains were STILL THERE.
I was not doing well. Time was ticking away to the start of the lesson upstairs. Would I be able to go up there and stand there with a shirt with laban splat marks all over it. Well, the whiteness of the laban had gone but the dark marks were all over me. I did not much know what to do.
Well, I had to go do the lesson. The department secretary suggested I go borrow a jacket to cover this. It was either this or send the other available colleague up in my place. First I thought THAT was what I had to do, and he didn't look pleased.
Then he suggested I borrow his denim shirt-jacket. YES! I was SAVED! It just about fitted me, so on it went and I collected my pens, books and papers and up to the lesson I went. The shirt was covered up and I was REPRIEVED!
The students asked me why I was wearing this jacket and I did tell them. Not sure if they understood.
Now I make GOOD SURE that when I SHAKE a bottle of ANYTHING that I have one finger over the lid JUST IN CASE …
OK, that is the first thing to tell you. The second thing happened, I think, just before Christmas. Or maybe just after – I don't remember for sure, but it was when I had to go down to the Rashid Mall once again to the boys at Mobily to pay for another internet month (or maybe to pay AGAIN cos I'd run out or something).
I suppose I'd finished in Mobily because I was upstairs in the coffee bar I always go to there. It is called, “Seattle's Best”, in the Rashid Mall by the way. Nice coffee and I used to enjoy the caramel cakes till they stopped having them. Anyway, they have nice coffee and some nice and VERY comfortable chairs in the corner which are PERFECT for lazing around in for a while.
Prayer time came around. What normally happens during prayer times here is that you cannot buy anything but they don't normally insist you get out. You CAN stay sitting there. So although nobody is there working and serving customers, if you are already INSIDE, you can STAY INSIDE. If you want to leave, you can also do so or in shops and supermarkets you have to wait until they open up again, ie, a lock-in situation. It varies slightly from place to place but this is generally the way here.
Anyway, prayer time was here, the usual wailing sounds of the Call To Prayer filled the shopping mall and the lights went off in this coffee bar. I remained sitting there as I always do as did a number of other Saudis. I was sitting in the back of the coffee bar but there were many Saudis sitting together talking and drinking in the chairs at the front.
As I was sitting there minding my own business and watching people go by, I saw one or two Saudi policemen going by. Funny, I thought, what are THEY doing here?
Now, I had heard that in Rashid Mall there ARE often 'muttawah' who roam around at prayer times making sure places are closed and that Muslims get off their behinds and get IN to the mosques and PRAY! Yes, shock, horror, probe! Even HERE they do not RUSH into the mosque at the moment of the Call! I do not know how it works at prayer times – maybe they do not have to go EXACTLY at Prayer Time moment but can go a little while later. Well, you do not EVER see them rushing en-masse to the mosques so maybe there is some 'leeway' involved. But they DO have to go sometime though it can be a matter of group or peer pressure at times.
So there were policemen going around which I thought strange. And then to my right and outside the coffee bar a red-checked “ghutra” wearing man came by. He didn't have a particularly long beard. He stopped by the first two Saudis sitting there, spoke to them a bit and then they got up to go. He then moved on down to the second table and spoke to the second lot of Saudis there. THAT discussion proved to be longer and they needed much more “persuasion” but eventually then went too.
So only I was left it seemed – sitting there, lights out drinking my coffee and wondering what was to happen next. And then at the entrance to this coffee bar I saw a policeman come and stand there looking in my direction. I did not catch his eye though I knew he was there and I did not move either. And then the muttawah man came in.
Now, I have heard much of these muttawah and how nasty they are. There are stories galore online about them in years gone by of how they go about with their bamboo canes beating women in the streets for showing “too much”. Our HoD told a story once of a time 30 years ago (I think he said) when an American couple he knew were out and about in town in the marketplace somewhere and how, at prayer time, they had been chased out by a mutawah who followed them whipping their heels with his bamboo cane as they went.
So there I am sitting there and in comes the mutawah. “Hello, how are you?”, he started. “What nationality are you?”, to which I replied I was an Englishman. He then went on to explain that at prayer times people are not permitted to sit in or wait in coffee bars or shops because that was “the Saudi culture”.
Well, obviously he wanted me to leave, and so I duly went out with my unfinished coffee and went to sit on the benches outside the coffee bar to drink up. Another mutawah man was still arguing with one more Saudi pair who were still sitting inside. Eventually they DID leave and I saw their rather sheepish faces as they came out “defeated”.
“In days gone by you'd have had a bamboo cane in your face!”, I was told later back at college by more knowledgeable colleagues. Well, I was quite glad of that!
So what and who are the mutawah? Well, basically they are the “religious police” here. Officially they are the “Department of Vice and Virtue ” and so their task is to make sure people are “doing the right thing” I suppose.
They are not “police” as such and do not have the power of arrest by themselves. This is why they always go around WITH the Saudi police. But here's the thing – the police are only necessary for FOREIGNERS because the Saudis themselves treat them with great respect. And the fact that FIRST they clear out the Saudis, then they go away and come BACK with the police for the foreigners just shows you what little they can do.
As I said, they used to be REALLY nasty pieces of work. But recently, I am told, they have been told that they have to “be nice to people”. Maybe the Saudi hierarchy are aware that their reputation is not a good one and want to do something about it. Or maybe, more truthfully, the days of the mutawah are numbered in Saudi Arabia.
I do not think they have mutawah in other Arab countries though I may be wrong. On this website http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Mutawa they define mutawah as those whose job it is to keep people to a “strict code of conduct” which, of course, means in accordance with Islamic law.
However – here's a strange thing – in the soldier boy class days, they used the word 'mutawah' in a different way. One man in the other military class was termed a 'mutawah' although clearly he was not one though did have some kind of authoritative presence. And indeed, one way to describe another DIFFERENT student was to call HIM a 'mutawah' because he was bearded (though not a long beard at all!). So perhaps the term, “muttawah”, means something along the lines of “the pure one” since it is definitely encouraged for Muslims to grow beards. Some kind of sign of 'manliness' I think.
So THAT was my one and only encounter with mutawa in Saudi Arabia. Well, you see around many long straggly-bearded men who may or may not be genuine mutawah. Around the compound there WERE some once, and on that day the hospital cafeteria cash tills “magically” had signs directing men to Till A and women to Till B. But the signs disappeared a few days later.
Their strictness has been tempered these days. It may turn out to be, in many MANY years in the future, that there will NOT BE mutawah in this country any more. Or maybe only in the bigger cities like Riyadh or Jeddah. What authority do they have these days? Well, THAT is unclear, though what IS clear is that they are not what they used to be. And that is ONLY a good thing!
OK, that's the end of that. Well, I just wanted to tell you about those two incidents. Two things I felt could NOT be left out of the blog since they are important.
Oh, one more thing on the mutawah day. I came of the Rashid Mall with my shopping to the place where I normally wait for the taxi. And something new HERE! The POLICE were here! Yes, a police car drew up and shooed away all the taxis that were waiting there. Well, strictly speaking that spot is not for taxis or, indeed, for ANY cars to be waiting in. I was a little nervous that I wouldn't be able to take my taxi or that I would be reprimanded for waiting here for a taxi or even that the taxi driver would have problems. Ah, but LUCKILY as my taxi came, the police were a little way further up hassling a taxi driver there. So I quickly got in and we drove off before they could see us!
Two things in ONE DAY I'd not seen before – mutawah AND police!
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Procedure Procedure this is your Exit Time
Tuesday 16th February 2010
PHEW!! That was an ANGRY ending to yesterday's blog post. And quite right too since it REALLY did get to me and doesn't matter if last day or not it is still just WRONG what they are allowed to get away with. But I'll say no more now cos I think you got the picture.
Ahh onto more peaceful things. Ohh, and how could I NOT mention up until now the nice “goodbye” food made for us by “the ladies” of our department. They are so good at doing that kind of thing, and they excelled themselves last Tuesday morning when it was laid on. Well, we had already been told to be in the office for 11am as there was this happening.
I was there first. Kind of loitered for a bit till they saw me and then the other two came – AmericanMan and DutchBrit. Into the office of the one woman who doesn't share since there is more space there. And WHAT A NICE spread there was!
So what was there food-wise? Well now – I don't know the names of all these food things since I am not well up on Arabic food names. However, I have found a few sources on this online and some things that I THINK you will know are Hummus, Shawirma (gyro), stuffed vine leaves (dolmas), Baklava, Falafel, Taboula, and Cuscus.
Well, not all these were there. Of those that I know, there were houmous (maybe spelled hummus), the stuffed vine leaves and some kind of pastries which looked a bit like sausage rolls (but with other things in the middle). Oh, and there were larger, flat, rounded pastries which also had fillings.
Well, these are nice and tasty, they are not that spicy though maybe they could be. And one thing you can be SURE of is that they were in PLENTIFUL SUPPLY. One definitely POSITIVE thing to say about Arab eating is that they don't do things by halves and there is always food to excess.
Ah, and the last thing there was was cake. It seemed to be a kind of sponge cake with poppy-seeds in the middle though not too much. You COULD compare it with the poppy-seed cake that they make in Poland (the name of which is “makowiec”) but there is MUCH less poppyseed in the Arabic version (good because I don't like its taste!).
Well, this was all very nice. Ahh but they had a card and a present for the three of us too. It was a nice Goodbye Card with messages from the three ladies inside and good luck messages and email addresses. And then there was the present. Quite a lot of wrapping paper – three layers I counted and the last layer was crepe paper.
What was the present? Well, unfortunately I have to admit that although the thought was a nice one, it did not appeal to me. Basically it was a small, framed and crafted insignia of the Saudi Arabian palm tree and cross-swords. The first thing I noticed was that that it was not straight in the frame – the swords were wonky. Typical, I thought, they can't even get THAT right. I did not mean the ladies – I simply meant the people who made the insignia.
Obviously we all thanked them for all these things. But secretly I knew then that I would not be taking this home to England with me. Did I need any more reminders of my time here than I already had? For sure NOT! Even though it has only been a year, it is not one I shall forget in a hurry!
Well, we all sat there and ate and talked for a while. It was nearing lunchtime. I was still sure I was going to go to lunch despite all the food here (though I didn't need to).
One thing which happened was when we somehow got talking on the subject of the year that had gone by. And for some reason, DutchBrit decided to have a go at AmericanMan because of the fact that in semester one he had rarely been in his office when he was not teaching and, technically speaking, when he “should have been” there.
Almost NONE of the teachers are around in the staffroom when they are not teaching even though, according to the contract, we all SHOULD be there every day till 4pm. And why WOULD you be there just to sit on your behind doing nothing for the rest of the day?
Anyway, it was rather uncalled for this “rebuke” especially from the guy who had been very late back from his holiday THREE TIMES in a row causing disruption to HIS classes. And AmericanMan said so back to him, and quite rightly too. It passed long ago that DutchBrit had any “ammunition” to preach about OTHER PEOPLE'S so-called “violations” of contract. And YET he still feels he has the right to bring THIS topic up!
Well the argument didn't go very far as AmericanMan played it down and said we didn't really need to go on about this NOW on this occasion. And that was as far as it got.
It seems that the college still values his opinion. Apparently the Dean upstairs suggested he could make a list of Things To Improve Around Here, which he was happy to go and do. You know, I STILL can't make this guy out. The walls of his credibility are breaking down and STILL he feels he can make a contribution here. He is leaving a few weeks after myself and AmericanMan and on his grumpy days it is like he holds that against us.
I went in today to the college to hand in my ID card. And there he was moaning about how there was “no teamwork” around the English department and how nobody would take responsibility for anything. Huh! So what's NEW, matey! Was he surprised by this? Was it something NEW that had happened? Absolutely NOT, and yet he still grumbles and moans about it like it matters any more.
WHO THE HELL CARES I say!! yes, we know WELL what the faults and bad things are about this college we are in. But to HELL with it! We are LEAVING and as far as I'm concerned they can all drown together in their own “lakes” of inefficiency and chaos!
Ach enough of THAT. Anyway it was a nice last day and a very nice gesture from the ladies. I do hope they can make changes, though I very much doubt it. Actually I think there is more chance of a Saudi skier winning the Men's Downhill at the Winter Olympics right now in Vancouver, Canada! But there you go!
So anyway – all need to go into the college has gone. I have been quietly getting on with the business of my Exit Plan. All has gone smoothly, all signatures have been collected. Basically, so long as one keeps a cool head and doesn't let the nonsense of the bureaucratic process get to you, it is a simple process. All you have to do is “follow the yellow brick road” and do as the instructions say you need to. It is just a matter of signing out what the college may have given to you for the job (mostly nothing), getting the housing checked, getting your flight ticket, arranging your flight and Exit Visa, handing in ID badge and keys and stuff and arranging transportation to the airport on the day.
Packing too hasn't been too much of a burden. I have two nice big suitcases and a backpack for the laptop. Well, a few things I will not be able to take with me, but those you already know about – coffee maker, juicer, voltage transformer, kettle, three boxes of tissues and a few odd food items from the fridge. No big deal. Just a case of cramming it all in and making sure you can zip it up without too much risk of that zip breaking.
I feel sure I will be well over the 30kg that Saudi Arabia Airlines (Saudia) allows me to have. And then I am not sure WHAT happens. Will I have to pay a big, fat excess or not? I guess I'll find out on the day.
If I DO, then it will have to go on the credit card since I now have almost no Saudi riyals left. I HAVE now received my last pay cheque and yesterday afternoon I took it down to the bank. What I wanted to do was (1) pay it in, (2) get some British pounds for when I arrive in London and until I get my new ATM card, and (3) transfer the WHOLE of what is in my SABB account to the UK.
All was done! Took quite a long time, but got it all done. The only thing that bothered me as that I was trying to do this with only a copy of my Iqama and a copy of my passport handy. I had to go in to see the Operations Manager of the bank, and it was all OK as he pointed out that on the Temporary Iqama it was written (in Arabic) that all was OK and I was a fully “legit” kind of guy.
So no problem. Hmm – had I known THIS, I would not have bothered to go down the previous month to do the bank transfer. But I wanted to be safe, not sorry. If it had turned out that they would NOT allow a bank transfer, then I suppose I would have had to withdraw it ALL in cash and have the stress of carrying THAT all the way to London.
One slight thing that worried me for a while was that I would be rather short of money to last me my last few days here. As I wrote the bank transfer form, I realised that all I had was all that was in my wallet, and it wasn't a lot. With five days still to go, and with the need to eat, I could have had a problem.
Ahh, but thanks to the bank teller, I was able to have my last 70 riyals in cash. A slight miscalculation on HIS part meant that I could do that. We had to keep re-doing forms and there was the matter of the 70 riyal fee for doing the bank transfer which was forgotten about and then remembered and then … well anyway, I got those last 70 riyals as cash and WILL survive.
I am assuming that there is nothing else to be paid for between now and the airport. Nothing big anyway. There was a 50 riyal “airport tax” which I paid in the Finance Department. Some countries do have a kind of Departure Tax levied at airports which can catch you out if you are not aware of it, and I got caught a bit like that when leaving Thailand some years ago (luckily I had enough money on me!).
Thee is nothing else really to talk about. The only slight problem I have had with this signature-collecting was two days ago when the man in Human Resources was not there just before lunchtime to sign. I was told to go to the COLLEGE Personnel Department and look for this other man. He was not around - “on vacation” they said and gave me the name of ANOTHER man downstairs to go and see. THIS man, in turn, did not want to sign and his reason was unclear but I think it was just he did not quite know the process. Being given the runaround there, I gave in, but was told helpfully back in college that if I went back in the afternoon to HR near prayer time, then the man I was looking for in the FIRST PLACE would be there. And indeed he WAS, so problem solved!
All I have to do now is phone transportation to check that my Transportation Request HAS been received and they DO know I exist. I have also been advised to get my passport BEFORE I get to the airport, and this IS a good idea. If you remember, the procedure is that THEY meet you AT THE AIRPORT and only at THAT point do you receive the passport in your hand. However, ANYTHING could happen. Road traffic delays, an accident, the guy to meet me could get ill etc. etc. and then NO PASSPORT! Best to have it in YOUR hand BEFORE going there. Well, it is said they WILL give it to you if they trust you. So … would YOU trust this man not to run away and not to sneak back into the country for another job?
I'll leave THAT to your own initiative to answer … I'm SURE I know the answer already.
Not many more blogs to go. Not many more days. If I feel the need, I will write on Saturday morning which then WILL be the last in the series. There are a few things I'd like to close with. And a few “loose ends” that need tying ...
See you then!
PHEW!! That was an ANGRY ending to yesterday's blog post. And quite right too since it REALLY did get to me and doesn't matter if last day or not it is still just WRONG what they are allowed to get away with. But I'll say no more now cos I think you got the picture.
Ahh onto more peaceful things. Ohh, and how could I NOT mention up until now the nice “goodbye” food made for us by “the ladies” of our department. They are so good at doing that kind of thing, and they excelled themselves last Tuesday morning when it was laid on. Well, we had already been told to be in the office for 11am as there was this happening.
I was there first. Kind of loitered for a bit till they saw me and then the other two came – AmericanMan and DutchBrit. Into the office of the one woman who doesn't share since there is more space there. And WHAT A NICE spread there was!
So what was there food-wise? Well now – I don't know the names of all these food things since I am not well up on Arabic food names. However, I have found a few sources on this online and some things that I THINK you will know are Hummus, Shawirma (gyro), stuffed vine leaves (dolmas), Baklava, Falafel, Taboula, and Cuscus.
Well, not all these were there. Of those that I know, there were houmous (maybe spelled hummus), the stuffed vine leaves and some kind of pastries which looked a bit like sausage rolls (but with other things in the middle). Oh, and there were larger, flat, rounded pastries which also had fillings.
Well, these are nice and tasty, they are not that spicy though maybe they could be. And one thing you can be SURE of is that they were in PLENTIFUL SUPPLY. One definitely POSITIVE thing to say about Arab eating is that they don't do things by halves and there is always food to excess.
Ah, and the last thing there was was cake. It seemed to be a kind of sponge cake with poppy-seeds in the middle though not too much. You COULD compare it with the poppy-seed cake that they make in Poland (the name of which is “makowiec”) but there is MUCH less poppyseed in the Arabic version (good because I don't like its taste!).
Well, this was all very nice. Ahh but they had a card and a present for the three of us too. It was a nice Goodbye Card with messages from the three ladies inside and good luck messages and email addresses. And then there was the present. Quite a lot of wrapping paper – three layers I counted and the last layer was crepe paper.
What was the present? Well, unfortunately I have to admit that although the thought was a nice one, it did not appeal to me. Basically it was a small, framed and crafted insignia of the Saudi Arabian palm tree and cross-swords. The first thing I noticed was that that it was not straight in the frame – the swords were wonky. Typical, I thought, they can't even get THAT right. I did not mean the ladies – I simply meant the people who made the insignia.
Obviously we all thanked them for all these things. But secretly I knew then that I would not be taking this home to England with me. Did I need any more reminders of my time here than I already had? For sure NOT! Even though it has only been a year, it is not one I shall forget in a hurry!
Well, we all sat there and ate and talked for a while. It was nearing lunchtime. I was still sure I was going to go to lunch despite all the food here (though I didn't need to).
One thing which happened was when we somehow got talking on the subject of the year that had gone by. And for some reason, DutchBrit decided to have a go at AmericanMan because of the fact that in semester one he had rarely been in his office when he was not teaching and, technically speaking, when he “should have been” there.
Almost NONE of the teachers are around in the staffroom when they are not teaching even though, according to the contract, we all SHOULD be there every day till 4pm. And why WOULD you be there just to sit on your behind doing nothing for the rest of the day?
Anyway, it was rather uncalled for this “rebuke” especially from the guy who had been very late back from his holiday THREE TIMES in a row causing disruption to HIS classes. And AmericanMan said so back to him, and quite rightly too. It passed long ago that DutchBrit had any “ammunition” to preach about OTHER PEOPLE'S so-called “violations” of contract. And YET he still feels he has the right to bring THIS topic up!
Well the argument didn't go very far as AmericanMan played it down and said we didn't really need to go on about this NOW on this occasion. And that was as far as it got.
It seems that the college still values his opinion. Apparently the Dean upstairs suggested he could make a list of Things To Improve Around Here, which he was happy to go and do. You know, I STILL can't make this guy out. The walls of his credibility are breaking down and STILL he feels he can make a contribution here. He is leaving a few weeks after myself and AmericanMan and on his grumpy days it is like he holds that against us.
I went in today to the college to hand in my ID card. And there he was moaning about how there was “no teamwork” around the English department and how nobody would take responsibility for anything. Huh! So what's NEW, matey! Was he surprised by this? Was it something NEW that had happened? Absolutely NOT, and yet he still grumbles and moans about it like it matters any more.
WHO THE HELL CARES I say!! yes, we know WELL what the faults and bad things are about this college we are in. But to HELL with it! We are LEAVING and as far as I'm concerned they can all drown together in their own “lakes” of inefficiency and chaos!
Ach enough of THAT. Anyway it was a nice last day and a very nice gesture from the ladies. I do hope they can make changes, though I very much doubt it. Actually I think there is more chance of a Saudi skier winning the Men's Downhill at the Winter Olympics right now in Vancouver, Canada! But there you go!
So anyway – all need to go into the college has gone. I have been quietly getting on with the business of my Exit Plan. All has gone smoothly, all signatures have been collected. Basically, so long as one keeps a cool head and doesn't let the nonsense of the bureaucratic process get to you, it is a simple process. All you have to do is “follow the yellow brick road” and do as the instructions say you need to. It is just a matter of signing out what the college may have given to you for the job (mostly nothing), getting the housing checked, getting your flight ticket, arranging your flight and Exit Visa, handing in ID badge and keys and stuff and arranging transportation to the airport on the day.
Packing too hasn't been too much of a burden. I have two nice big suitcases and a backpack for the laptop. Well, a few things I will not be able to take with me, but those you already know about – coffee maker, juicer, voltage transformer, kettle, three boxes of tissues and a few odd food items from the fridge. No big deal. Just a case of cramming it all in and making sure you can zip it up without too much risk of that zip breaking.
I feel sure I will be well over the 30kg that Saudi Arabia Airlines (Saudia) allows me to have. And then I am not sure WHAT happens. Will I have to pay a big, fat excess or not? I guess I'll find out on the day.
If I DO, then it will have to go on the credit card since I now have almost no Saudi riyals left. I HAVE now received my last pay cheque and yesterday afternoon I took it down to the bank. What I wanted to do was (1) pay it in, (2) get some British pounds for when I arrive in London and until I get my new ATM card, and (3) transfer the WHOLE of what is in my SABB account to the UK.
All was done! Took quite a long time, but got it all done. The only thing that bothered me as that I was trying to do this with only a copy of my Iqama and a copy of my passport handy. I had to go in to see the Operations Manager of the bank, and it was all OK as he pointed out that on the Temporary Iqama it was written (in Arabic) that all was OK and I was a fully “legit” kind of guy.
So no problem. Hmm – had I known THIS, I would not have bothered to go down the previous month to do the bank transfer. But I wanted to be safe, not sorry. If it had turned out that they would NOT allow a bank transfer, then I suppose I would have had to withdraw it ALL in cash and have the stress of carrying THAT all the way to London.
One slight thing that worried me for a while was that I would be rather short of money to last me my last few days here. As I wrote the bank transfer form, I realised that all I had was all that was in my wallet, and it wasn't a lot. With five days still to go, and with the need to eat, I could have had a problem.
Ahh, but thanks to the bank teller, I was able to have my last 70 riyals in cash. A slight miscalculation on HIS part meant that I could do that. We had to keep re-doing forms and there was the matter of the 70 riyal fee for doing the bank transfer which was forgotten about and then remembered and then … well anyway, I got those last 70 riyals as cash and WILL survive.
I am assuming that there is nothing else to be paid for between now and the airport. Nothing big anyway. There was a 50 riyal “airport tax” which I paid in the Finance Department. Some countries do have a kind of Departure Tax levied at airports which can catch you out if you are not aware of it, and I got caught a bit like that when leaving Thailand some years ago (luckily I had enough money on me!).
Thee is nothing else really to talk about. The only slight problem I have had with this signature-collecting was two days ago when the man in Human Resources was not there just before lunchtime to sign. I was told to go to the COLLEGE Personnel Department and look for this other man. He was not around - “on vacation” they said and gave me the name of ANOTHER man downstairs to go and see. THIS man, in turn, did not want to sign and his reason was unclear but I think it was just he did not quite know the process. Being given the runaround there, I gave in, but was told helpfully back in college that if I went back in the afternoon to HR near prayer time, then the man I was looking for in the FIRST PLACE would be there. And indeed he WAS, so problem solved!
All I have to do now is phone transportation to check that my Transportation Request HAS been received and they DO know I exist. I have also been advised to get my passport BEFORE I get to the airport, and this IS a good idea. If you remember, the procedure is that THEY meet you AT THE AIRPORT and only at THAT point do you receive the passport in your hand. However, ANYTHING could happen. Road traffic delays, an accident, the guy to meet me could get ill etc. etc. and then NO PASSPORT! Best to have it in YOUR hand BEFORE going there. Well, it is said they WILL give it to you if they trust you. So … would YOU trust this man not to run away and not to sneak back into the country for another job?
I'll leave THAT to your own initiative to answer … I'm SURE I know the answer already.
Not many more blogs to go. Not many more days. If I feel the need, I will write on Saturday morning which then WILL be the last in the series. There are a few things I'd like to close with. And a few “loose ends” that need tying ...
See you then!
Monday, 15 February 2010
Ohh those Cheating Arab Students!!
Monday 15th February 2010
Well, here I am with only five days left in this country. Blog time is running out, and now THIS entry will seem MUCH too late. But hey – I've been busy with my “Clearance” which involved running around coordinating, getting signatures and more. But more on that in a later blog. Right now, I am here to tell you all about the very last day of work in the college.
Well, it was the last of the exam invigilation sessions. The others had gone smooth as silk with no trouble and no noticeable cheating of any kind. THAT, in itself, was quite remarkable and, I suppose, meant that all the very “best” was yet to come.
And so it proved to be …
Up I went to the classroom where the exam was to be. A few students were milling around so I hung around outside until the guy who I supposed was the chief invigilator came along. Went in with him, introduced myself and we chatted briefly for a while. Seemed a friendly sort of chap – I think the first who actually WANTED to talk to me out of those I'd been in the exam with. I noticed that the third invigilator wasn't here. Well, I thought, it is a small classroom and I am sure we will cope on this, the last day …
The students came in slowly. Had to get a few more chairs. The type of chairs are those which have the “mini desk” tacked on the side and they flip up to let you in and out. I think that kind is a nice and practical kind of desk, though others don't like them. One problem is that they DO easily break and it DOES mean you can't spread all your books, pens etc. around too much since you only have space for your writing pad and maybe one book which you read from. Yes, space IS an issue with them, but I still like them. Sometimes they come in left-hand versions but when I have tried to bring them in for student exam use, they have been rejected - “because they are left-handed”. Well, Saudis have a thing about the left hand being “unclean” and so maybe a left-handed desk is also this way. No consideration for the many left-handed students around though who WOULD find such a thing useful. Anyway …
OK, it seemed we had three classes in together and apparently they were all doing the same exam even though one of those was a diploma-level class. Doesn't make much sense, but then in the words of our departed Head of Department, “WHERE ARE YOU??”. Knowing THAT makes EVERYTHING perfectly sensible of course.
So the students were seated. I took my invigilation seat. There was one guy sitting in the centre of the room and he had VERY suspicious eyes. He was sitting there and turning around EVEN NOW to see where his friends were and, in addition, was keeping an eye on me as if to “stare me out” or something.
I KNEW there and then that HE was going to be a troublemaker. And indeed I was right, though he was not alone.
The exam started quietly enough and the first half hour was trouble-free. But this guy in the centre was looking behind him, and to THAT I hissed at him and shook my head to let him know I saw this. He gestured as if to say, “What, ME? What am I doing?”, but was clearly NOT innocent. It had begun …
Soon the examiner came in. To my surprise, the examiner was a woman. Well the examiner/teacher I mean as she was, I suppose, their class teacher. A middle-aged African woman she was and she wore the statutory head covering that women of ANY kind here are required to. Foreign women do not cover their faces as Saudi women do, but they do need to have this long black cloak.
OK, a side-step for a moment. I know I have gone through this before, but mentioning face coverings and such made me go look at what these things are and to get their names right. This website, http://www.insidesaudi.com/saudiwomen.html has all the information you need about the Saudi abaya and hijab. As you will see, the 'abaya' is the “large, loose-fitting cloak-like garment worn over their clothes”, and the 'hijab' is basically the headscarf plus face covering. The appearance and colour of these varies around the region, but in Saudi Arabia both of these are generally black (though many do have patterns of some kind).
Back to the exam. So this woman was here and went around helping “her” students. If you ask me, she was helping too much. And if you ask me twice, I wouldn't have ANY kind of help at ALL on exam day. In my opinion, the teacher's role ends on exam day and it is up to the students. Well, you could argue that if they don't understand the question then they DO need help, but then that is a matter for the people who WRITE the exams to MAKE the questions understandable. And I have written about THAT before in the case of the English department and ITS exams.
So, she finished her “helping” and off she went. It was after, I think, the first hour (of two) that the trouble started.
The way it went was like this – whenever the chief invigilator stepped outside the room, somebody or MORE than one person would start the whispering. I WAS sitting there of COURSE and did not move the whole time. I saw this, hissed at them, shook my head and yet it carried on.
I do not remember why it was the chief invigilator had to go out. Well, he was not COMPLETELY out the classroom, but it was when students said they wanted to go to the toilet and he stood at the door making sure they came back. EVERY TIME he did THAT, the whisperings started.
Now, I use the word “whisperings” here, but I am understating the case. What went on in that exam was a total DISGRACE! There is subtle cheating and there is downright, blatant and BRAZEN DISREGARD for the presence of the invigilator. No no – of course they didn't do it when the CHIEF INVIGILATOR was in the room. He is a Saudi man you see, and I am but a “humble foreigner” who deigns to sit in their “mighty presence”.
They acted as if I was not there at ALL!
Well, I did what I could do. When the chief invigilator came back, I told him about this person or those people who had been communicating. He moved THREE PEOPLE in total. TOTALLY USELES Since they just “re-established the network” again and carried on as before. The first person he moved up to the front which worked for a while. But then he moved ANOTHER guy ALSO to the front a few chairs along to his right and so THEY STARTED their communicating. The “centre guy” was, indeed, in the thick of it and he was the WORST OF ALL! With his friend behind him and others around him he was turning round to them and looking. Oh, and GET THIS – TWICE he actually SHOWED HIS EXAM PAPER to his friends behind him. And I DON'T mean in a subtle way. I mean that right in front of ME he held his paper up just so his friends behind him could see it. I don't mean above his head, but I mean that he held it in such a way that anyone behind him could see it. Either THAT, or he moved aside so that his friend behind him could have a good look, which he certainly DID.
In all we are talking about five or six people who were blatantly and obviously communicating and cheating. And what did our chief invigilator do about it? Well, he moved two or three around the room and he spoke to some of them to, I suppose, tell them to stop. But this was UTTERLY USELESS!!
WHY DID HE NOT KICK THEM RIGHT OUT OF THE EXAM??
I was SO ANNOYED by the end of this exam. Yes we know that students do cheat at times. But mostly these are subtle whispers that you hear but cannot quite determine where they come from, and anyway are infrequent enough to ignore. THIS, however, was the most atrocious display of in-your-face cheating that I have EVER SEEN in my whole 15 years of teaching. I have not seen much I must tell you. And there are a few stories to tell about it, though not here. But NEVER as flagrant a breach of exam conditions as I saw on this day!!
At the end of the exam when all students had gone, I went to the chief invigilator. I said to him this - “If I had been in your position, there would have been two or three of those students OUT OF THE ROOM with their exams over!”.
To THAT he did not have much of a reply.
This is, sadly, the way here. Saudi teachers want to keep their jobs. If they act in such a way that somebody gets kicked out of an exam, then the problem will come back to THEM! These are people with families and children. They do not want to cause trouble for themselves and don't want anyone from on-high coming down on them. For if a student WAS to be kicked out, then he would complain and then that invigilator would have to justify his actions. The student would always win because they would have what they call here, “wasta”.
What is '”wasta”? Well, in its simplest form it means “connections”, or, “influence”, if not through themselves then through their parents or some high-up connection. It is, as we would say, all about, “who you know” and what influence they could have on things. Check the Wikipedia on 'wasta' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasta for more info.
And THAT is what REALLY annoys me the MOST! I tell you, I lay in bed fuming about what I had seen this day, and I really could NOT get to sleep for one or two nights.
Yes, you may say, “So why should you care? You are leaving!”. Well, sorry, but it DOES bother me the attitude of students like this … AND the attitudes of the TEACHERS TOO!
If they do NOTHING, they NOTHING will change! And so that is the way it works here.
Cheating is a way of life. It starts at school and goes unchecked and not stamped on. It then continues throughout their academic life and they probably get much of what they achieve through the same.
Yes, it goes on. I KNOW it does. And I am not going to stamp it out. But I tell you – I for ONE am NOT going to TOLERATE IT! Oh, I don't just mean the odd whispered cheat here and there, but I mean the kind of thing I was witness to on this exam day.
Even NOW, five whole days after the event, this exam day will live with me for as long as I am a teacher. It was blatant disrespect for me as a foreign teacher. What I SHOULD have done was walk right OUT of that exam and left that chief invigilator to deal with those fuckers by himself. But I didn't because I suppose I just wanted to “do my duty” this one last time and get the whole stupid thing over with and get out of here.
And in five days and an hour and a half from now as I sit writing this, I will be doing just THAT. Goodbye and FUCK OFF you cheating bastards, ALL OF YOU!!
Well, here I am with only five days left in this country. Blog time is running out, and now THIS entry will seem MUCH too late. But hey – I've been busy with my “Clearance” which involved running around coordinating, getting signatures and more. But more on that in a later blog. Right now, I am here to tell you all about the very last day of work in the college.
Well, it was the last of the exam invigilation sessions. The others had gone smooth as silk with no trouble and no noticeable cheating of any kind. THAT, in itself, was quite remarkable and, I suppose, meant that all the very “best” was yet to come.
And so it proved to be …
Up I went to the classroom where the exam was to be. A few students were milling around so I hung around outside until the guy who I supposed was the chief invigilator came along. Went in with him, introduced myself and we chatted briefly for a while. Seemed a friendly sort of chap – I think the first who actually WANTED to talk to me out of those I'd been in the exam with. I noticed that the third invigilator wasn't here. Well, I thought, it is a small classroom and I am sure we will cope on this, the last day …
The students came in slowly. Had to get a few more chairs. The type of chairs are those which have the “mini desk” tacked on the side and they flip up to let you in and out. I think that kind is a nice and practical kind of desk, though others don't like them. One problem is that they DO easily break and it DOES mean you can't spread all your books, pens etc. around too much since you only have space for your writing pad and maybe one book which you read from. Yes, space IS an issue with them, but I still like them. Sometimes they come in left-hand versions but when I have tried to bring them in for student exam use, they have been rejected - “because they are left-handed”. Well, Saudis have a thing about the left hand being “unclean” and so maybe a left-handed desk is also this way. No consideration for the many left-handed students around though who WOULD find such a thing useful. Anyway …
OK, it seemed we had three classes in together and apparently they were all doing the same exam even though one of those was a diploma-level class. Doesn't make much sense, but then in the words of our departed Head of Department, “WHERE ARE YOU??”. Knowing THAT makes EVERYTHING perfectly sensible of course.
So the students were seated. I took my invigilation seat. There was one guy sitting in the centre of the room and he had VERY suspicious eyes. He was sitting there and turning around EVEN NOW to see where his friends were and, in addition, was keeping an eye on me as if to “stare me out” or something.
I KNEW there and then that HE was going to be a troublemaker. And indeed I was right, though he was not alone.
The exam started quietly enough and the first half hour was trouble-free. But this guy in the centre was looking behind him, and to THAT I hissed at him and shook my head to let him know I saw this. He gestured as if to say, “What, ME? What am I doing?”, but was clearly NOT innocent. It had begun …
Soon the examiner came in. To my surprise, the examiner was a woman. Well the examiner/teacher I mean as she was, I suppose, their class teacher. A middle-aged African woman she was and she wore the statutory head covering that women of ANY kind here are required to. Foreign women do not cover their faces as Saudi women do, but they do need to have this long black cloak.
OK, a side-step for a moment. I know I have gone through this before, but mentioning face coverings and such made me go look at what these things are and to get their names right. This website, http://www.insidesaudi.com/saudiwomen.html has all the information you need about the Saudi abaya and hijab. As you will see, the 'abaya' is the “large, loose-fitting cloak-like garment worn over their clothes”, and the 'hijab' is basically the headscarf plus face covering. The appearance and colour of these varies around the region, but in Saudi Arabia both of these are generally black (though many do have patterns of some kind).
Back to the exam. So this woman was here and went around helping “her” students. If you ask me, she was helping too much. And if you ask me twice, I wouldn't have ANY kind of help at ALL on exam day. In my opinion, the teacher's role ends on exam day and it is up to the students. Well, you could argue that if they don't understand the question then they DO need help, but then that is a matter for the people who WRITE the exams to MAKE the questions understandable. And I have written about THAT before in the case of the English department and ITS exams.
So, she finished her “helping” and off she went. It was after, I think, the first hour (of two) that the trouble started.
The way it went was like this – whenever the chief invigilator stepped outside the room, somebody or MORE than one person would start the whispering. I WAS sitting there of COURSE and did not move the whole time. I saw this, hissed at them, shook my head and yet it carried on.
I do not remember why it was the chief invigilator had to go out. Well, he was not COMPLETELY out the classroom, but it was when students said they wanted to go to the toilet and he stood at the door making sure they came back. EVERY TIME he did THAT, the whisperings started.
Now, I use the word “whisperings” here, but I am understating the case. What went on in that exam was a total DISGRACE! There is subtle cheating and there is downright, blatant and BRAZEN DISREGARD for the presence of the invigilator. No no – of course they didn't do it when the CHIEF INVIGILATOR was in the room. He is a Saudi man you see, and I am but a “humble foreigner” who deigns to sit in their “mighty presence”.
They acted as if I was not there at ALL!
Well, I did what I could do. When the chief invigilator came back, I told him about this person or those people who had been communicating. He moved THREE PEOPLE in total. TOTALLY USELES Since they just “re-established the network” again and carried on as before. The first person he moved up to the front which worked for a while. But then he moved ANOTHER guy ALSO to the front a few chairs along to his right and so THEY STARTED their communicating. The “centre guy” was, indeed, in the thick of it and he was the WORST OF ALL! With his friend behind him and others around him he was turning round to them and looking. Oh, and GET THIS – TWICE he actually SHOWED HIS EXAM PAPER to his friends behind him. And I DON'T mean in a subtle way. I mean that right in front of ME he held his paper up just so his friends behind him could see it. I don't mean above his head, but I mean that he held it in such a way that anyone behind him could see it. Either THAT, or he moved aside so that his friend behind him could have a good look, which he certainly DID.
In all we are talking about five or six people who were blatantly and obviously communicating and cheating. And what did our chief invigilator do about it? Well, he moved two or three around the room and he spoke to some of them to, I suppose, tell them to stop. But this was UTTERLY USELESS!!
WHY DID HE NOT KICK THEM RIGHT OUT OF THE EXAM??
I was SO ANNOYED by the end of this exam. Yes we know that students do cheat at times. But mostly these are subtle whispers that you hear but cannot quite determine where they come from, and anyway are infrequent enough to ignore. THIS, however, was the most atrocious display of in-your-face cheating that I have EVER SEEN in my whole 15 years of teaching. I have not seen much I must tell you. And there are a few stories to tell about it, though not here. But NEVER as flagrant a breach of exam conditions as I saw on this day!!
At the end of the exam when all students had gone, I went to the chief invigilator. I said to him this - “If I had been in your position, there would have been two or three of those students OUT OF THE ROOM with their exams over!”.
To THAT he did not have much of a reply.
This is, sadly, the way here. Saudi teachers want to keep their jobs. If they act in such a way that somebody gets kicked out of an exam, then the problem will come back to THEM! These are people with families and children. They do not want to cause trouble for themselves and don't want anyone from on-high coming down on them. For if a student WAS to be kicked out, then he would complain and then that invigilator would have to justify his actions. The student would always win because they would have what they call here, “wasta”.
What is '”wasta”? Well, in its simplest form it means “connections”, or, “influence”, if not through themselves then through their parents or some high-up connection. It is, as we would say, all about, “who you know” and what influence they could have on things. Check the Wikipedia on 'wasta' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasta for more info.
And THAT is what REALLY annoys me the MOST! I tell you, I lay in bed fuming about what I had seen this day, and I really could NOT get to sleep for one or two nights.
Yes, you may say, “So why should you care? You are leaving!”. Well, sorry, but it DOES bother me the attitude of students like this … AND the attitudes of the TEACHERS TOO!
If they do NOTHING, they NOTHING will change! And so that is the way it works here.
Cheating is a way of life. It starts at school and goes unchecked and not stamped on. It then continues throughout their academic life and they probably get much of what they achieve through the same.
Yes, it goes on. I KNOW it does. And I am not going to stamp it out. But I tell you – I for ONE am NOT going to TOLERATE IT! Oh, I don't just mean the odd whispered cheat here and there, but I mean the kind of thing I was witness to on this exam day.
Even NOW, five whole days after the event, this exam day will live with me for as long as I am a teacher. It was blatant disrespect for me as a foreign teacher. What I SHOULD have done was walk right OUT of that exam and left that chief invigilator to deal with those fuckers by himself. But I didn't because I suppose I just wanted to “do my duty” this one last time and get the whole stupid thing over with and get out of here.
And in five days and an hour and a half from now as I sit writing this, I will be doing just THAT. Goodbye and FUCK OFF you cheating bastards, ALL OF YOU!!
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Unlucky Thirteen ... but not for me!
Sunday 7th February 2010
Well last night was only a pathetic one-round effort of exercise walking due to the Bug Man. Ah HAH but TONIGHT I made up for it by doing TWICE around as normal and THEN I saw the gym was open so I went in.
Hmm I've been a bit slack on gym lately, but my argument is that as prayer times go further towards 7pm then it pushes my own timings out. I either have to do the whole gym-and-walk thing much earlier or if I do it later then there is no gym times cos it closes at 8pm.
Prayer times are all very well and good but having to organise and reorganise your day around these forever shifting and changing things is hard work!
Tonight is rather cool outside. Well, I simply REFUSE to use the C-word to describe weather in Saudi Arabia because there is NO WAY that is possible. But this morning when I rolled out to go to lunch (NOT a contradiction!), the wind was blowing quite strongly and the temperature WAS what they would call cold around HERE. However, compared to what you most likely still have in northern Europe now, that is NOT a word you would agree with.
By the way, the rain has been back here. It was first back last Tuesday (2nd Feb.) and when I left the apartment building, the ground was wet and the temperature was already cooler. During the evening sitting here in my flat there was the beautiful sound of night-time insects outside as it cooled down further. Rain came again on Friday, and again when I left the apartment building it had obviously rained at night. Funny it is that I never hear any rain at night, but then, come to think of it, the rain here lasts so little time and is so light that you would never know anyway!
Anyway, YES INDEED, thirteen is today a very lucky day for me since it is THAT number of days I have left to go. The packing process has been started, which can be problematic when you really need something you have packed away in some deep, dark corner of a case somewhere. And I have made little progress in trying to sell the few things that I won't take with me – all I have managed to sell has been my MP3 music player. I have now given the coffee maker and juicer to our English dept. secretary. He must be the luckiest guy around – all leaving teachers give him a lot of nice stuff that they can't take with them! I also had to give him my 110V to 220V transformer that I bought ages ago. The only reason I bought the darned thing was because, when I bought my laptop loudspeakers ages ago I DID NOT CHECK properly the box to see if they were USB-powered or not (they weren't). I then needed to buy this extra transformer because of course the voltage in the apartment blocks is 110V ONLY! Cheap loudspeakers made more expensive by this transformer. In fact, the 'speakers cost 60 riyals and the transformer … well THAT was 100 riyals!
But, saying this, I am very happy with these loudspeakers. Apart from the inconvenience of having to find an extra power socket for them, they are a nice small size and create a decent sound. But now … well, having given away the transformer, I have to pack away the speakers and rely ONLY on the built-in speakers inside the laptop.
Well, for laptop speakers they aren't bad at all, but you don't get the bass sound that you need.
Well now – the English department has a new acting Head! And – get THIS – it is a WOMAN! YESSS! A woman has a position of responsibility here in Saudi Arabia!
I would never have thought I would see such a thing. And GREAT it is too because the woman in question – one of our teachers who teaches the nursing female students – is very well-liked by all and WILL get the respect she deserves. Really she was the obvious choice – she has been here a while and knows how it all works.
In fact she is the second “acting Head Of Department” that we have had since the HoD that was departed. The other guy who was the “de facto” HoD never wanted to do the job anyway even though he is by FAR the most experienced teacher of all of us. He only did the job for about a week. Many people considered him to be a rather irritable man who, it seemed, didn't enjoy the extra pressure that the job brings. He is what you might call a “company man” - the sort of guy who keeps his head down, does his job to the letter, never criticises publicly and always knows what to do. He knows the courses inside out too. As a person, he is considered rather dull, though I like his nice, dry sense of humour. He has, it is rumoured, never been out of the country on a holiday ANYWHERE and spends all his holiday time at home with his wife (although she DOES go out on holidays, and we have also heard he DOES like buying nice expensive presents for her every now and then).
Last week the “ladies” wanted to talk to me about something important. Oh, by the way, when I say “the ladies”, I am referring to our female teacher colleagues. To call them, “the ladies”, seems to be the way that the ex-HoD and others referred to them. Sounds a rather patronising title to me, but there you go. Anyway, what they wanted to ask me was all kinds of questions about WHAT could change in the college so that teachers did not leave so often.
WOW!! WHERE do I start with such a question?? Well, actually there was a list of points they had already prepared and I went through them giving what I thought and adding more when needed. The trouble is, of course, that for me it is not just about the college. The problem(s) with being here and living here start but do not END with the college as you, my loyal readers, will know after all this time reading this trash that I write! However, they wanted to know about things they COULD do something about and already had some ideas. Changes in coursebooks for the pre-clinical students, for example.
I sat there, I gave my opinions, but I wonder if they will have any success in changing the place. Ever since I have been here, and many years before me, the general policy in this compound is to run the whole place into the ground and to economise. That is obvious in MANY ways. The recreation centre is mostly empty and unused. Some years ago there was a swimming pool in some kind of SECOND recreation centre in another building. Cost savings are now being done in the hiring of English teachers. As an English department we have had a net loss of FIVE TEACHERS during the year I have been here. The latest news is that one or two MIGHT be on the way plus one “lokum” (a word that means a Saudi teacher of English who works part-time and isn't paid much). What else? Ahh even the thermometer-clock that stands for all to see near the entrance gate has been switched off and most likely will NOT be back on ever again.
And, speaking of economies, there is ANOTHER big one that has happened this last week on our TV's. ALL the TV channels have changed! GONE is BBC World! Gone is the channel where you could watch films! IN have come more Saudi channels, a new Philippine language channel, one more channel from Bahrain, and there are now TWO “TV Lanka” channels from, of course, Sri Lanka.
YES! NO MORE BBC WORLD! Tell you what – imagine if I had JUST come here to see absolutely NO English language channels on my TV! OK, well you might consider the “Ten Sports / Neo Cricket” channels from India as being for English language viewers. But they are sport only – no news, no movies. And the picture quality of THAT one is ABYSMAL!! All I see is SNOW SNOW and more flickery SNOW! And NO COLOUR!!
Oh, OK OK – if I wanted to watch football then YES there are at least TWO channels showing THAT! One shows Saudi club football and the other has some kind of European football from “Serie A” in Italy. Might be OK, but I can't STAND the commentator!
Oh, and I must not forget the “KSA 2” channel. At the weekend there was some kind of programme broadcast from right HERE in eastern Province, and I recognised pictures of the Corniche area where they were filming. There was some kind of interview with some eminent English bank boss who is living and working out here. All very positive and he was all very complementary about everything out here – too cheesy to watch for long!
Ahh, and speaking about the “Ten Sports / Neo Cricket” channels, there is a strange phenomenon there. Sometimes, when a game is over it changes “magically” over from one channel to the other. Today when I was watching it happened and I have seen it before. You know what you see on screen when you have the remote control in your hand and you are changing channels? The bit in the bottom of the screen where it shows channel number and name? And you know what you see when someone is flicking through channels? I saw ALL of this! But I have no remote control! WHO ON EARTH is dong this? Does someone upstairs have the “master” remote control for the satellite box and changes it when they feel like it? That is what it looks like. I thought that the channels that you get were FIXED!! At least they don't do this in mid-game!
Well, the mystery of the Channel Changer will go with me to the skies I think because I will never find out either WHO is doing it or, if not anyone here, HOW it is happening!!
What else before I close for today? Ahh … the American bloke seems to have calmed down a bit now. No Mr Bean, no umbrella remarks, no other things he was doing before. Maybe he has lost his audience!
Always the way – such people do it “for show” but in isolation they have nobody to “appeal to”!
Well last night was only a pathetic one-round effort of exercise walking due to the Bug Man. Ah HAH but TONIGHT I made up for it by doing TWICE around as normal and THEN I saw the gym was open so I went in.
Hmm I've been a bit slack on gym lately, but my argument is that as prayer times go further towards 7pm then it pushes my own timings out. I either have to do the whole gym-and-walk thing much earlier or if I do it later then there is no gym times cos it closes at 8pm.
Prayer times are all very well and good but having to organise and reorganise your day around these forever shifting and changing things is hard work!
Tonight is rather cool outside. Well, I simply REFUSE to use the C-word to describe weather in Saudi Arabia because there is NO WAY that is possible. But this morning when I rolled out to go to lunch (NOT a contradiction!), the wind was blowing quite strongly and the temperature WAS what they would call cold around HERE. However, compared to what you most likely still have in northern Europe now, that is NOT a word you would agree with.
By the way, the rain has been back here. It was first back last Tuesday (2nd Feb.) and when I left the apartment building, the ground was wet and the temperature was already cooler. During the evening sitting here in my flat there was the beautiful sound of night-time insects outside as it cooled down further. Rain came again on Friday, and again when I left the apartment building it had obviously rained at night. Funny it is that I never hear any rain at night, but then, come to think of it, the rain here lasts so little time and is so light that you would never know anyway!
Anyway, YES INDEED, thirteen is today a very lucky day for me since it is THAT number of days I have left to go. The packing process has been started, which can be problematic when you really need something you have packed away in some deep, dark corner of a case somewhere. And I have made little progress in trying to sell the few things that I won't take with me – all I have managed to sell has been my MP3 music player. I have now given the coffee maker and juicer to our English dept. secretary. He must be the luckiest guy around – all leaving teachers give him a lot of nice stuff that they can't take with them! I also had to give him my 110V to 220V transformer that I bought ages ago. The only reason I bought the darned thing was because, when I bought my laptop loudspeakers ages ago I DID NOT CHECK properly the box to see if they were USB-powered or not (they weren't). I then needed to buy this extra transformer because of course the voltage in the apartment blocks is 110V ONLY! Cheap loudspeakers made more expensive by this transformer. In fact, the 'speakers cost 60 riyals and the transformer … well THAT was 100 riyals!
But, saying this, I am very happy with these loudspeakers. Apart from the inconvenience of having to find an extra power socket for them, they are a nice small size and create a decent sound. But now … well, having given away the transformer, I have to pack away the speakers and rely ONLY on the built-in speakers inside the laptop.
Well, for laptop speakers they aren't bad at all, but you don't get the bass sound that you need.
Well now – the English department has a new acting Head! And – get THIS – it is a WOMAN! YESSS! A woman has a position of responsibility here in Saudi Arabia!
I would never have thought I would see such a thing. And GREAT it is too because the woman in question – one of our teachers who teaches the nursing female students – is very well-liked by all and WILL get the respect she deserves. Really she was the obvious choice – she has been here a while and knows how it all works.
In fact she is the second “acting Head Of Department” that we have had since the HoD that was departed. The other guy who was the “de facto” HoD never wanted to do the job anyway even though he is by FAR the most experienced teacher of all of us. He only did the job for about a week. Many people considered him to be a rather irritable man who, it seemed, didn't enjoy the extra pressure that the job brings. He is what you might call a “company man” - the sort of guy who keeps his head down, does his job to the letter, never criticises publicly and always knows what to do. He knows the courses inside out too. As a person, he is considered rather dull, though I like his nice, dry sense of humour. He has, it is rumoured, never been out of the country on a holiday ANYWHERE and spends all his holiday time at home with his wife (although she DOES go out on holidays, and we have also heard he DOES like buying nice expensive presents for her every now and then).
Last week the “ladies” wanted to talk to me about something important. Oh, by the way, when I say “the ladies”, I am referring to our female teacher colleagues. To call them, “the ladies”, seems to be the way that the ex-HoD and others referred to them. Sounds a rather patronising title to me, but there you go. Anyway, what they wanted to ask me was all kinds of questions about WHAT could change in the college so that teachers did not leave so often.
WOW!! WHERE do I start with such a question?? Well, actually there was a list of points they had already prepared and I went through them giving what I thought and adding more when needed. The trouble is, of course, that for me it is not just about the college. The problem(s) with being here and living here start but do not END with the college as you, my loyal readers, will know after all this time reading this trash that I write! However, they wanted to know about things they COULD do something about and already had some ideas. Changes in coursebooks for the pre-clinical students, for example.
I sat there, I gave my opinions, but I wonder if they will have any success in changing the place. Ever since I have been here, and many years before me, the general policy in this compound is to run the whole place into the ground and to economise. That is obvious in MANY ways. The recreation centre is mostly empty and unused. Some years ago there was a swimming pool in some kind of SECOND recreation centre in another building. Cost savings are now being done in the hiring of English teachers. As an English department we have had a net loss of FIVE TEACHERS during the year I have been here. The latest news is that one or two MIGHT be on the way plus one “lokum” (a word that means a Saudi teacher of English who works part-time and isn't paid much). What else? Ahh even the thermometer-clock that stands for all to see near the entrance gate has been switched off and most likely will NOT be back on ever again.
And, speaking of economies, there is ANOTHER big one that has happened this last week on our TV's. ALL the TV channels have changed! GONE is BBC World! Gone is the channel where you could watch films! IN have come more Saudi channels, a new Philippine language channel, one more channel from Bahrain, and there are now TWO “TV Lanka” channels from, of course, Sri Lanka.
YES! NO MORE BBC WORLD! Tell you what – imagine if I had JUST come here to see absolutely NO English language channels on my TV! OK, well you might consider the “Ten Sports / Neo Cricket” channels from India as being for English language viewers. But they are sport only – no news, no movies. And the picture quality of THAT one is ABYSMAL!! All I see is SNOW SNOW and more flickery SNOW! And NO COLOUR!!
Oh, OK OK – if I wanted to watch football then YES there are at least TWO channels showing THAT! One shows Saudi club football and the other has some kind of European football from “Serie A” in Italy. Might be OK, but I can't STAND the commentator!
Oh, and I must not forget the “KSA 2” channel. At the weekend there was some kind of programme broadcast from right HERE in eastern Province, and I recognised pictures of the Corniche area where they were filming. There was some kind of interview with some eminent English bank boss who is living and working out here. All very positive and he was all very complementary about everything out here – too cheesy to watch for long!
Ahh, and speaking about the “Ten Sports / Neo Cricket” channels, there is a strange phenomenon there. Sometimes, when a game is over it changes “magically” over from one channel to the other. Today when I was watching it happened and I have seen it before. You know what you see on screen when you have the remote control in your hand and you are changing channels? The bit in the bottom of the screen where it shows channel number and name? And you know what you see when someone is flicking through channels? I saw ALL of this! But I have no remote control! WHO ON EARTH is dong this? Does someone upstairs have the “master” remote control for the satellite box and changes it when they feel like it? That is what it looks like. I thought that the channels that you get were FIXED!! At least they don't do this in mid-game!
Well, the mystery of the Channel Changer will go with me to the skies I think because I will never find out either WHO is doing it or, if not anyone here, HOW it is happening!!
What else before I close for today? Ahh … the American bloke seems to have calmed down a bit now. No Mr Bean, no umbrella remarks, no other things he was doing before. Maybe he has lost his audience!
Always the way – such people do it “for show” but in isolation they have nobody to “appeal to”!
Saturday, 6 February 2010
With Friends like These ....
Saturday 6th February 2010
Well … there I was hardly started my (intermittent) evening's exercise walk when I was rudely interrupted … by the Bugmobile!
OK, yes yes this IS my own name for it, so now I should explain. This is the (cheap n' nasty n' toxic) way that the powers-that-be in this compound deal with the nasty flying and crawling insect population that does grow in these parts. What it is is this:- basically this pickup truck goes around with what looks like a water cannon on the back. But instead of water, there are great big CLOUDS of dense white smoke billowing out of it. The pickup truck drives around all the areas of where the plants are “spraying” away this smoke. And when I say big clouds I mean BIG clouds of smoke. Yes, it soon disperses, but the fact is that it IS toxic and you really want to stay out of it.
I saw it up ahead of me spraying away and there was another walker/jogger ahead of me who was right in the middle of this smoke cloud. He had to cover his mouth and nose and get on through it. I didn't go through the worst of it, but STILL it smelled pretty bad. All I could do was cover my mouth and nose with my hands. Ahh … and now I'd better WASH my hands before I continue typing …
So the exercise walk was curtailed. Which is good because now I feel that little bit refreshed enough to get writing. And as there are only two weeks of blog left now, I mustn't miss a thing.
YESSSS!! As from today there is a mere FORTNIGHT of being here remaining. But let's not dwell on that right now because there are other things to talk about today.
FRIENDS … we all need them. They are a normal part of all of our lives. We say, don't we, that, “You can choose your friends but not your family”, and, "Good friends are like stars.... You don't always see them, but you know they are always there" (author unknown). However … friendship is a complex ol' thing and it can turn out that people you think you get along with well can become the people who you wish would SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Here I am referring to the American guy. Up until now he seemed to be a pretty good bloke to get to know and seemed a good guy to talk to at lunchtimes and on the weekends when we were having coffee down at Starbuck's and walking along the Corniche chatting.
He has always referred to me as “chappie” and in return I call him “geezer”. No big deal there – just a way to get along with each other. That in itself has been fine. But during a number of lunchtimes, some times going into town and other times in the office he's been having a go at me and making fun when others are around.
What do I mean? Well, for starters referring to me as “Mr Bean”. And he has been saying “how British” he thinks I am. He makes stupid comments because, for example, I was going around in the height of summer with an umbrella and “How typically English” that was (I have no hat and the umbrella was all I could use). Also, when talking about the weather out here in Saudi, I said that I just don't like sun all the time but better would be more variation such as sunny some days, rain others, hot some days, not so hot on others etc. etc. and HIS not-so intelligent comment on THAT was that Ohh such a typical Brit who likes grey and nasty weather and doesn't like sun because that is lacking in his country.
What else? Ohh another dumb thing the other day when we were sitting talking with one of the female teachers in her office. As far as I knew, we were just talking there and there was some reference to American and British English of some kind. I don't remember what it was. But one other word he then chose to pick on and try and say how his American way of saying it was right and mine was just funny.
Well, it was a small but unnecessary thing anyway. And AGAIN on one trip into town in the taxi he was AGAIN going on about how “British” I was and that he was trying to think of a good person to liken me to other than Mr Bean.
Ohh and THEN there was the REALLY idiot, juvenile thing he did last week when the three of us had gone into town. Well, he and I went into Carrefour supermarket just for some shopping. There were not many people there as it was a weekday. So there I was going around with my trolley and I came to the tomatoes tray, got a bag and started looking at them and choosing the ones which were not too green, not squashed etc. etc. as you normally would. As I am doing this, I hear a voice behind me which is OBVIOUSLY the voice of “our American friend”. He is calling out across the supermarket and is hiding behind one of the display rows where other fruit and vegetables are. “Stop fondling those tomatoes!”, “You there! Leave the tomatoes alone!”, and other such things. Yes, and unfortunately I DO turn around but he is hidden behind them, but I know it is HIS idiot voice.
Now, I don't know. Some of you reading this will ACTUALLY think this IS funny after all. Well, sorry, but maybe after a year of exposure to kindergarten-brained Saudi students, I have had ENOUGH of this childish sort of so-called “humour”. But I did NOT find this funny at all and just wanted him to SHUT THE FUCK UP and stop behaving like a stupid kid. Such things might be amusing in an American shopping mall, but not here in serious Saudi. Oh, but he went on and on with this. I just tried to ignore him and get my tomatoes and move on. Would he follow me around doing this elsewhere? I hoped not, and luckily he didn't.
Well there is other stuff too involving stuff I have told him which he has used to put me down with.
I don't know why this is. Maybe because I found out what his rather embarrassing middle name is. Maybe he just wants to shout off his loud Texas mouth. Well, I can see why he gets on so well with his Saudi students and I know why he has enjoyed going up and down the country and being photographed with them. Yes he seems to LOVE getting his picture taken with Saudis.
Ahh, and one MORE thing that I don't think I mentioned before. A few weeks before the end of semester it was his birthday on one day during the week – was either a Saturday or a Monday. He obviously had told his students this was coming. And WHAT did they do on that morning in lesson time IN THE CLASSROOM?? They had a PARTY!
When I say a PARTY, I MEAN IT! In that classroom was FOOD GALORE! On the teacher's “stage” when I went in, there were students cross-legged with flat-bread and pots of sauces. On a table in the centre (many tables pushed together) were many other sweets, profiterole-type things, little savoury things and juices. Ah, and a jug of that mystical thing called “Arabic coffee” (it isn't like what YOU know as “coffee” and is made with something called cardamom and you drink it out of little ceramic cups which do not have handles).
Of COURSE, the classroom was full of students from most of the other classes who had been invited in. At the start of my lesson period 2, one of his students had come into my class and invited us all in. Well, MY students had already seen this party going on, so they were MORE than happy to “abandon the lesson” and go across.
I went too. But ohhh I really did NOT want to be doing that. Socialising with a bunch of people I didn't WANT TO BE socialising with, and all THIS in lesson time when the end-of-semester exams were due the week after.
Ohh, but the food and drink was not all. Soon the singing and dancing started. And there he was with all of them in a circle doing Arabic dances. If there had been a few swords there too, then it would not have gone amiss.
I REALLY had to get out of that classroom. They were making a lot of noise. Yes they were having fun too with all this, and it was working them up into a frenzy of excitement. I KNEW that the rest of the day would be impossible. I mean, what is the WORST thing to do with a bunch of over-excitable “kids”? Well, THERE IT WAS RIGHT THERE!
Trying to do ANYTHING with my class after the long break time was IMPOSIBLE. They were still in “party mood” and were EVEN MORE NOISY and EXUBERANT than they normally are. Eventually after a while of this, I had had ENOUGH and I told them all to leave because the lesson was pointless. By this time I had a nasty headache.
One thing that did happen during all this when I was in the classroom. And I was quite surprised by it. As I was standing there eating my piece of cake, next to me stood the notorious guy I call “Leg Man”. I tried not to see that he was there – I mean, he is NOT any person I wish to be civil to in ANY kind of social situation. But he seemed calm, asking how I was. I said I was OK. He then said something which I really found amazing. “I am sorry about 'Monitor Man' in your class”, he said (obviously he used his real name), “but he is a good man really”.
How about THAT! A rather profound thing to say from a guy who I would otherwise say was a complete NIT-WIT!
Maybe he is changing. My other colleague whose class he is in now is surprised when I tell him he is a complete asshole. His opinion is that the guy is not so bad at all!!??
Well, if he IS changing then it is about time and long overdue!
So anyway … that is the story of how things with THAT teacher colleague. “And what about the others?”, you ask, “Are they also so weird as this one?”. Well, you know, every teacher who comes out to a place like THIS has to be, as we say, “one card short of a full deck”. And indeed most of them are in some way!
I have talked much about my colleague who had to go to hospital. Well, he is out of there now though still has his sessions with the psychiatrist. Or is it a psychotherapist? Anyway, he seems different now he is out. Yes, he STILL moans about the college and everything in it but STILL maintains he has no problem with the country itself (that is quite hilarious!). Apparently he has his “social interests” down town now and goes down there twice a week or so (lots of taxi money going there!). But he DOES seem not quite right in his mind these days. Whatever it was that happened that put him in hospital, it DOES seem to have affected him and he seems less stable these days. I told the story last time of how he lost his marks and had to “recreate” them (which he eventually did “somehow”!). So enough about him.
Then there is the guy who I think I talked about in one of the very first blog entries that I made. The man whose head is full of trivia on almost any trivial subject you can name. On top of that, he is a terrible gossip and REALLY makes things up left, right and centre. Things which aren't just a BIT wrong too – like, for instance, me when I forgot my keys and was seen in the security car going to get the master key set, he said that I had been “manhandled” by the police. Oh, and he has a completely PERVERTED MIND too! Not just the “regular stuff”, oh no! But stuff like S&M and he also shows more than a “passing interest” in underage girls. Things that he comes out with … well, look, I consider myself a fairly broad-minded man but THAT MAN has a SICK mind! In the wrong environment, he could turn the “wrong way”.
Then there is the old Irish gay guy. Always has a scowl on his face, and is not nice to most people around. He is another of those who maintains he “doesn't give a shit” about teaching and yet he was always the one to say “Come on, they're watching us, let's get back to the classroom quick!”. Always has his little stories too, and has spent a lot of the lunchtimes talking with “pervert man” above about things going on in Ireland (corruption, dodgy priests etc.). Oh, and he TOO is a nasty gossip and exaggerator, so really they go well together. And they are both near retirement age so they will be here till that happens. One lunchtime he came to the table where we were all sitting telling me that the American teacher and the guy who was the “de-facto” HoD both wanted to see me about something. This was on a morning when I had not gone into the college since I had no classes and no exams to invigilate. I almost believed him since it could have been to do with filling in the “long sheets” which were where student marks for the semester had to go. Luckily I saw the American coming into lunch as I was leaving and he knew nothing about this. HUH! That mean bastard just wanted me to go into the college for NOTHING! Wasn't really necessary, WAS it now?
These are who is left now. Let us not forget who has already gone and who was there when I arrived nearly a year ago. Some I have mentioned already. Firstly, there was the Pakistani man who had been to the same further education college as me in Slough. His smile was always a mouthful of metal braces. He tried, when he could (and, indeed, as ALL “good Muslims” do) to convert you and if you shared an office with him you could be sure that on YOUR desk would land a leaflet all about the “wonder” that is Islam. At first he seemed OK but was a rather serious-minded person who took the job VERY SERIOUSLY all the time. And he said he was having a GREAT TIME in the country … or was that because his family was here with him?
Ahh, yes, then there was the Welshman. He never liked teaching and was for SURE no teacher – was just here for the money (as we all are!). Again I talked much about him in early blogs as a man who I always regretted talking to. Even when you saw him around, he rarely said Hello to you even and did NOT ever look happy. Well, THAT is understandable! Now he is happy back in England on a Chemistry course.
Next was the old Texan. Now, to me he seemed another good man, but there were times when he had his moods according to others. One time when I was ill, he was in there covering my military class and he REALLY yelled LOUDLY at them to be quiet! He also was near retirement age. I also remember he was rather a forgetful man. Rumours spread by our Irish “friend” suggest he lived something of a “double life” with his faithful and loving wife on one had back in the USA, and then on other occasions he would be in Indonesia “looking for boys”. But the Irishman and THIS man never ever got on, so this is most likely just a made up story for the sake of spite.
What about people outside the English department? Well, I haven't had many dealings with many others except at lunchtimes (though rarely). The most notable of these has been one man who DEFINITELY has had quite a time out here. At first, he was, I've heard, a teacher like us in the English department for a while. He was much involved in the writing or the re-writing of one of the Clinical course coursebooks. However, that never got finished since before he had finished it, he disappeared across The Causeway (the bridge way that goes over to Bahrain) and never came back! Apparently it was because he didn't like his accommodation, but from what I can make out it was silly things like the carpets and the furniture were not to his “demanding tastes”. Well, he DID come back after the college pleaded him to and promised to give him what he wanted. He has some kind of medical skills and/or knowledge that they really need here. Now he IS back, but he works in another more medically-based teaching department of which he is the Head.
Apparently he did this “disappearance” again, though I don't know why or, indeed, why he came back. But I think I overheard him saying it was because he wanted to go back and work in the USA for a while just to “see if he could”.
I haven't had much to do with this man, but he strikes me as another of those who is rather above himself and something of a “diva”. One lunchtime last week he came to our teachers' table on which I was sitting together with the American, the hospital colleague and some others. Somehow the topic of travel came up. He and the American talked about Egypt – they are BOTH Americans in fact. Well, the American said how much he was looking forward to going there. I remarked that in Egypt there is nothing to see which hasn't already been seen by “the world” and that WHY go there since you can see pictures and videos galore of the pyramids etc. and that they are nothing new.
Travel destinations then moved to Europe and they were talking about countries like Spain and Germany. Well, you know Americans and Europe! It is some far off place for them. Ah HAH but THEN on hearing that I knew about Poland, this “diva” guy mentioned Prague (Czech Republic of course). And according to him, it was the worst city he has ever been to!
WHAAAT?? I could not believe what I was hearing. “How can you NOT like Prague?”, I asked him. And his story was like this:- in Prague he had wanted to go on the metro. He had his ticket, but at the top of the escalator a man stopped him and asked him to give him his ticket because he was a ticket inspector. FOOLISHLY he DID give it to him, and then at the BOTTOM of the escalator a REAL ticket inspector asked him for his ticket which he now DID NOT HAVE! Prague Metro ticket inspectors are plain-clothes only – kind of like the bus ticket inspectors in Poland.
Well, not having a ticket, the ticket inspector said this “diva” guy had to pay a fine. He refused to and there was some kind of argument I guess. I don't remember if he said he paid it or not, but then he said he DID get on the metro train and, according to him, “four police officers were following him around”.
And because of THIS, the next day he went to the nearest travel agent and said “When is the next flight out of here?” and duly left Prague! And it is for THAT reason and THAT REASON ALONE that he hates Prague so much!!
I mean, WHAT a sucker he was falling for a scam like THAT! And then he got caught and, like the true “diva” he is, he thought himself “too good” to have to pay it or something. And IS THAT any good reason to HATE a city so much?? He didn't even SEE Prague I suppose and yet he despises it so.
Well, Prague doesn't need him either. But he made me think, “Ohh my GOD, what a DICKHEAD!”
OK, that's the end of my People Story. Ohh I haven't mentioned our ex Head of Department who is now gone. I never had too many run-ins with him, but for most people he was the “pit bull”. Well, he sure was DIRECT and if you took it the wrong way you COULD say he was a very rude man. Yes, I would agree that he was rather intimidating with such a temper, so the thing was not to provoke it (though many people did). Apparently he was a diabetic. And yet … every SINGLE day he, without fail, would drink SIX CANS of Diet Pepsi. And he admitted himself he had done the same for the last 30 years!!
Well, as far as Pepsi goes, he had THAT in common with the Saudis. I was often DISGUSTED to see students coming in first thing to the lesson at 7.30am with their can of Pepsi or, worse still, their cans of 7-Up. YUKKKK!!! Pepsi or 7-Up in the mornings?? Time to puke I think.
It has put me off the stuff! Of course, it WOULD explain why they got so hyper-hyper with all that sugary shite going into their bodies all day.
But even at LUNCHTIMES the drink of choice is one or even TWO cans of Pepsi to wash down the chicken and rice meal!
Time for some orange juice I think! Good night!
Well … there I was hardly started my (intermittent) evening's exercise walk when I was rudely interrupted … by the Bugmobile!
OK, yes yes this IS my own name for it, so now I should explain. This is the (cheap n' nasty n' toxic) way that the powers-that-be in this compound deal with the nasty flying and crawling insect population that does grow in these parts. What it is is this:- basically this pickup truck goes around with what looks like a water cannon on the back. But instead of water, there are great big CLOUDS of dense white smoke billowing out of it. The pickup truck drives around all the areas of where the plants are “spraying” away this smoke. And when I say big clouds I mean BIG clouds of smoke. Yes, it soon disperses, but the fact is that it IS toxic and you really want to stay out of it.
I saw it up ahead of me spraying away and there was another walker/jogger ahead of me who was right in the middle of this smoke cloud. He had to cover his mouth and nose and get on through it. I didn't go through the worst of it, but STILL it smelled pretty bad. All I could do was cover my mouth and nose with my hands. Ahh … and now I'd better WASH my hands before I continue typing …
So the exercise walk was curtailed. Which is good because now I feel that little bit refreshed enough to get writing. And as there are only two weeks of blog left now, I mustn't miss a thing.
YESSSS!! As from today there is a mere FORTNIGHT of being here remaining. But let's not dwell on that right now because there are other things to talk about today.
FRIENDS … we all need them. They are a normal part of all of our lives. We say, don't we, that, “You can choose your friends but not your family”, and, "Good friends are like stars.... You don't always see them, but you know they are always there" (author unknown). However … friendship is a complex ol' thing and it can turn out that people you think you get along with well can become the people who you wish would SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Here I am referring to the American guy. Up until now he seemed to be a pretty good bloke to get to know and seemed a good guy to talk to at lunchtimes and on the weekends when we were having coffee down at Starbuck's and walking along the Corniche chatting.
He has always referred to me as “chappie” and in return I call him “geezer”. No big deal there – just a way to get along with each other. That in itself has been fine. But during a number of lunchtimes, some times going into town and other times in the office he's been having a go at me and making fun when others are around.
What do I mean? Well, for starters referring to me as “Mr Bean”. And he has been saying “how British” he thinks I am. He makes stupid comments because, for example, I was going around in the height of summer with an umbrella and “How typically English” that was (I have no hat and the umbrella was all I could use). Also, when talking about the weather out here in Saudi, I said that I just don't like sun all the time but better would be more variation such as sunny some days, rain others, hot some days, not so hot on others etc. etc. and HIS not-so intelligent comment on THAT was that Ohh such a typical Brit who likes grey and nasty weather and doesn't like sun because that is lacking in his country.
What else? Ohh another dumb thing the other day when we were sitting talking with one of the female teachers in her office. As far as I knew, we were just talking there and there was some reference to American and British English of some kind. I don't remember what it was. But one other word he then chose to pick on and try and say how his American way of saying it was right and mine was just funny.
Well, it was a small but unnecessary thing anyway. And AGAIN on one trip into town in the taxi he was AGAIN going on about how “British” I was and that he was trying to think of a good person to liken me to other than Mr Bean.
Ohh and THEN there was the REALLY idiot, juvenile thing he did last week when the three of us had gone into town. Well, he and I went into Carrefour supermarket just for some shopping. There were not many people there as it was a weekday. So there I was going around with my trolley and I came to the tomatoes tray, got a bag and started looking at them and choosing the ones which were not too green, not squashed etc. etc. as you normally would. As I am doing this, I hear a voice behind me which is OBVIOUSLY the voice of “our American friend”. He is calling out across the supermarket and is hiding behind one of the display rows where other fruit and vegetables are. “Stop fondling those tomatoes!”, “You there! Leave the tomatoes alone!”, and other such things. Yes, and unfortunately I DO turn around but he is hidden behind them, but I know it is HIS idiot voice.
Now, I don't know. Some of you reading this will ACTUALLY think this IS funny after all. Well, sorry, but maybe after a year of exposure to kindergarten-brained Saudi students, I have had ENOUGH of this childish sort of so-called “humour”. But I did NOT find this funny at all and just wanted him to SHUT THE FUCK UP and stop behaving like a stupid kid. Such things might be amusing in an American shopping mall, but not here in serious Saudi. Oh, but he went on and on with this. I just tried to ignore him and get my tomatoes and move on. Would he follow me around doing this elsewhere? I hoped not, and luckily he didn't.
Well there is other stuff too involving stuff I have told him which he has used to put me down with.
I don't know why this is. Maybe because I found out what his rather embarrassing middle name is. Maybe he just wants to shout off his loud Texas mouth. Well, I can see why he gets on so well with his Saudi students and I know why he has enjoyed going up and down the country and being photographed with them. Yes he seems to LOVE getting his picture taken with Saudis.
Ahh, and one MORE thing that I don't think I mentioned before. A few weeks before the end of semester it was his birthday on one day during the week – was either a Saturday or a Monday. He obviously had told his students this was coming. And WHAT did they do on that morning in lesson time IN THE CLASSROOM?? They had a PARTY!
When I say a PARTY, I MEAN IT! In that classroom was FOOD GALORE! On the teacher's “stage” when I went in, there were students cross-legged with flat-bread and pots of sauces. On a table in the centre (many tables pushed together) were many other sweets, profiterole-type things, little savoury things and juices. Ah, and a jug of that mystical thing called “Arabic coffee” (it isn't like what YOU know as “coffee” and is made with something called cardamom and you drink it out of little ceramic cups which do not have handles).
Of COURSE, the classroom was full of students from most of the other classes who had been invited in. At the start of my lesson period 2, one of his students had come into my class and invited us all in. Well, MY students had already seen this party going on, so they were MORE than happy to “abandon the lesson” and go across.
I went too. But ohhh I really did NOT want to be doing that. Socialising with a bunch of people I didn't WANT TO BE socialising with, and all THIS in lesson time when the end-of-semester exams were due the week after.
Ohh, but the food and drink was not all. Soon the singing and dancing started. And there he was with all of them in a circle doing Arabic dances. If there had been a few swords there too, then it would not have gone amiss.
I REALLY had to get out of that classroom. They were making a lot of noise. Yes they were having fun too with all this, and it was working them up into a frenzy of excitement. I KNEW that the rest of the day would be impossible. I mean, what is the WORST thing to do with a bunch of over-excitable “kids”? Well, THERE IT WAS RIGHT THERE!
Trying to do ANYTHING with my class after the long break time was IMPOSIBLE. They were still in “party mood” and were EVEN MORE NOISY and EXUBERANT than they normally are. Eventually after a while of this, I had had ENOUGH and I told them all to leave because the lesson was pointless. By this time I had a nasty headache.
One thing that did happen during all this when I was in the classroom. And I was quite surprised by it. As I was standing there eating my piece of cake, next to me stood the notorious guy I call “Leg Man”. I tried not to see that he was there – I mean, he is NOT any person I wish to be civil to in ANY kind of social situation. But he seemed calm, asking how I was. I said I was OK. He then said something which I really found amazing. “I am sorry about 'Monitor Man' in your class”, he said (obviously he used his real name), “but he is a good man really”.
How about THAT! A rather profound thing to say from a guy who I would otherwise say was a complete NIT-WIT!
Maybe he is changing. My other colleague whose class he is in now is surprised when I tell him he is a complete asshole. His opinion is that the guy is not so bad at all!!??
Well, if he IS changing then it is about time and long overdue!
So anyway … that is the story of how things with THAT teacher colleague. “And what about the others?”, you ask, “Are they also so weird as this one?”. Well, you know, every teacher who comes out to a place like THIS has to be, as we say, “one card short of a full deck”. And indeed most of them are in some way!
I have talked much about my colleague who had to go to hospital. Well, he is out of there now though still has his sessions with the psychiatrist. Or is it a psychotherapist? Anyway, he seems different now he is out. Yes, he STILL moans about the college and everything in it but STILL maintains he has no problem with the country itself (that is quite hilarious!). Apparently he has his “social interests” down town now and goes down there twice a week or so (lots of taxi money going there!). But he DOES seem not quite right in his mind these days. Whatever it was that happened that put him in hospital, it DOES seem to have affected him and he seems less stable these days. I told the story last time of how he lost his marks and had to “recreate” them (which he eventually did “somehow”!). So enough about him.
Then there is the guy who I think I talked about in one of the very first blog entries that I made. The man whose head is full of trivia on almost any trivial subject you can name. On top of that, he is a terrible gossip and REALLY makes things up left, right and centre. Things which aren't just a BIT wrong too – like, for instance, me when I forgot my keys and was seen in the security car going to get the master key set, he said that I had been “manhandled” by the police. Oh, and he has a completely PERVERTED MIND too! Not just the “regular stuff”, oh no! But stuff like S&M and he also shows more than a “passing interest” in underage girls. Things that he comes out with … well, look, I consider myself a fairly broad-minded man but THAT MAN has a SICK mind! In the wrong environment, he could turn the “wrong way”.
Then there is the old Irish gay guy. Always has a scowl on his face, and is not nice to most people around. He is another of those who maintains he “doesn't give a shit” about teaching and yet he was always the one to say “Come on, they're watching us, let's get back to the classroom quick!”. Always has his little stories too, and has spent a lot of the lunchtimes talking with “pervert man” above about things going on in Ireland (corruption, dodgy priests etc.). Oh, and he TOO is a nasty gossip and exaggerator, so really they go well together. And they are both near retirement age so they will be here till that happens. One lunchtime he came to the table where we were all sitting telling me that the American teacher and the guy who was the “de-facto” HoD both wanted to see me about something. This was on a morning when I had not gone into the college since I had no classes and no exams to invigilate. I almost believed him since it could have been to do with filling in the “long sheets” which were where student marks for the semester had to go. Luckily I saw the American coming into lunch as I was leaving and he knew nothing about this. HUH! That mean bastard just wanted me to go into the college for NOTHING! Wasn't really necessary, WAS it now?
These are who is left now. Let us not forget who has already gone and who was there when I arrived nearly a year ago. Some I have mentioned already. Firstly, there was the Pakistani man who had been to the same further education college as me in Slough. His smile was always a mouthful of metal braces. He tried, when he could (and, indeed, as ALL “good Muslims” do) to convert you and if you shared an office with him you could be sure that on YOUR desk would land a leaflet all about the “wonder” that is Islam. At first he seemed OK but was a rather serious-minded person who took the job VERY SERIOUSLY all the time. And he said he was having a GREAT TIME in the country … or was that because his family was here with him?
Ahh, yes, then there was the Welshman. He never liked teaching and was for SURE no teacher – was just here for the money (as we all are!). Again I talked much about him in early blogs as a man who I always regretted talking to. Even when you saw him around, he rarely said Hello to you even and did NOT ever look happy. Well, THAT is understandable! Now he is happy back in England on a Chemistry course.
Next was the old Texan. Now, to me he seemed another good man, but there were times when he had his moods according to others. One time when I was ill, he was in there covering my military class and he REALLY yelled LOUDLY at them to be quiet! He also was near retirement age. I also remember he was rather a forgetful man. Rumours spread by our Irish “friend” suggest he lived something of a “double life” with his faithful and loving wife on one had back in the USA, and then on other occasions he would be in Indonesia “looking for boys”. But the Irishman and THIS man never ever got on, so this is most likely just a made up story for the sake of spite.
What about people outside the English department? Well, I haven't had many dealings with many others except at lunchtimes (though rarely). The most notable of these has been one man who DEFINITELY has had quite a time out here. At first, he was, I've heard, a teacher like us in the English department for a while. He was much involved in the writing or the re-writing of one of the Clinical course coursebooks. However, that never got finished since before he had finished it, he disappeared across The Causeway (the bridge way that goes over to Bahrain) and never came back! Apparently it was because he didn't like his accommodation, but from what I can make out it was silly things like the carpets and the furniture were not to his “demanding tastes”. Well, he DID come back after the college pleaded him to and promised to give him what he wanted. He has some kind of medical skills and/or knowledge that they really need here. Now he IS back, but he works in another more medically-based teaching department of which he is the Head.
Apparently he did this “disappearance” again, though I don't know why or, indeed, why he came back. But I think I overheard him saying it was because he wanted to go back and work in the USA for a while just to “see if he could”.
I haven't had much to do with this man, but he strikes me as another of those who is rather above himself and something of a “diva”. One lunchtime last week he came to our teachers' table on which I was sitting together with the American, the hospital colleague and some others. Somehow the topic of travel came up. He and the American talked about Egypt – they are BOTH Americans in fact. Well, the American said how much he was looking forward to going there. I remarked that in Egypt there is nothing to see which hasn't already been seen by “the world” and that WHY go there since you can see pictures and videos galore of the pyramids etc. and that they are nothing new.
Travel destinations then moved to Europe and they were talking about countries like Spain and Germany. Well, you know Americans and Europe! It is some far off place for them. Ah HAH but THEN on hearing that I knew about Poland, this “diva” guy mentioned Prague (Czech Republic of course). And according to him, it was the worst city he has ever been to!
WHAAAT?? I could not believe what I was hearing. “How can you NOT like Prague?”, I asked him. And his story was like this:- in Prague he had wanted to go on the metro. He had his ticket, but at the top of the escalator a man stopped him and asked him to give him his ticket because he was a ticket inspector. FOOLISHLY he DID give it to him, and then at the BOTTOM of the escalator a REAL ticket inspector asked him for his ticket which he now DID NOT HAVE! Prague Metro ticket inspectors are plain-clothes only – kind of like the bus ticket inspectors in Poland.
Well, not having a ticket, the ticket inspector said this “diva” guy had to pay a fine. He refused to and there was some kind of argument I guess. I don't remember if he said he paid it or not, but then he said he DID get on the metro train and, according to him, “four police officers were following him around”.
And because of THIS, the next day he went to the nearest travel agent and said “When is the next flight out of here?” and duly left Prague! And it is for THAT reason and THAT REASON ALONE that he hates Prague so much!!
I mean, WHAT a sucker he was falling for a scam like THAT! And then he got caught and, like the true “diva” he is, he thought himself “too good” to have to pay it or something. And IS THAT any good reason to HATE a city so much?? He didn't even SEE Prague I suppose and yet he despises it so.
Well, Prague doesn't need him either. But he made me think, “Ohh my GOD, what a DICKHEAD!”
OK, that's the end of my People Story. Ohh I haven't mentioned our ex Head of Department who is now gone. I never had too many run-ins with him, but for most people he was the “pit bull”. Well, he sure was DIRECT and if you took it the wrong way you COULD say he was a very rude man. Yes, I would agree that he was rather intimidating with such a temper, so the thing was not to provoke it (though many people did). Apparently he was a diabetic. And yet … every SINGLE day he, without fail, would drink SIX CANS of Diet Pepsi. And he admitted himself he had done the same for the last 30 years!!
Well, as far as Pepsi goes, he had THAT in common with the Saudis. I was often DISGUSTED to see students coming in first thing to the lesson at 7.30am with their can of Pepsi or, worse still, their cans of 7-Up. YUKKKK!!! Pepsi or 7-Up in the mornings?? Time to puke I think.
It has put me off the stuff! Of course, it WOULD explain why they got so hyper-hyper with all that sugary shite going into their bodies all day.
But even at LUNCHTIMES the drink of choice is one or even TWO cans of Pepsi to wash down the chicken and rice meal!
Time for some orange juice I think! Good night!
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
The TESTING Season of Final Exams
Tuesday 2nd February
Yesss! We are into the final month of my desert life out here in Saudi Arabia. And as the weeks go it is more and more satisfying to walk over to the college knowing that such short trips are to end soon. Right now is exam season for all students. I like this time of year. It is like “handover time” where you as the teacher have done your stuff and now comes the great “leveller” that is the exam itself. No more moaning to you if they get bad marks, no disputing the answers, no, “WHY did you only give me 16 out of 20?”, moaners and groaners.
Well, there IS still that thing called “marking” to do but really that is not much of a chore because I know in my mind that it is the last time I will be doing it for a while. And I am very pleased to say that I HAVE finished all my marking already and all I have to do now is fill in the grading sheets, get them signed and then file away the tests either in my filing drawer or back in the Registry Department where they must be signed back in.
And what of the exams? Well, I mentioned last time about the mistakes on the pre-clinical exam. Ahh but that is NOT where it ends for I have also been involved in the 2nd year CLINICAL exam, which basically was a summary writing exercise as I have tried to do with them all year.
Sadly/Embarrassingly/Farcically there were problems with THAT exam too. Although I was involved in the writing of it, all I had to do was write a sample answer. I did offer some help in the form of texts that could have been used, but this was rejected by the other guy I was to do the tests with. OK, I thought, if you want to keep it to yourself, you can do so.
Well, his instructions for what to do were EXTREMELY confusing. I was assigned as “examiner” yesterday which meant that I did not sit in the classroom all the time but was only required in the first 10-15 minutes or so in case of student questions. Yes, they have two different roles here of “examiner” and “invigilator” which makes sense as an invigilator can go anywhere to any exam and need not know about the subject. But they consider here that students ARE allowed to ask the examiner to clarify what the question is asking them to do. I myself think even THAT is questionable since understanding and interpreting the question is all part of doing the exam. BUT, of course, these are foreign language students doing an exam written ENTIRELY in English so I suppose there is a case to justify having such an “examiner” present. The examiner IS a teacher of that year and of that subject. So, for example, yesterday I was assigned as “examiner” to three rooms where students were taking Clinical writing exams of what I had been doing that year with MY Clinical class and so I could advise if there were problems.
Well, it was not even two minutes past nine o'clock and the phone rang in the English department. I was just ready to go up there anyway, but there was a call STRAIGHT AWAY that my help was needed! Seemed odd that the exam had only JUST BEGUN and there was a problem.
Up I went and to the room I had been called to. There were five or six students who had questions, and all of those questions were similar. And when I looked at the wording of the question, I KNEW I was in for a bad time.
Oh, but BEFORE I'd even ENTERED any classroom I was confronted by the College registrar in the corridor asking how long this particular exam was. I was rather confused and answered that it was 2 hours like all of them. Well, on the exam paper it says 1 hour 30 minutes, he said. OK, I said, if that is what the paper says, then that is what it is. “Isn't this a unified course?”, he asked me. Didn't understand why he was asking that so I answered that yes, for sure it is. He repeated his question of how long the exam was and I repeated my answer, and then AGAIN he repeated the question about it being a “unified course” or not. WHY on earth is he asking me this question more than once, I thought.
I only found out much later that SOME of the exam papers said “2 HOURS” on the cover, while others said “1 HOUR 30 MINUTES”!! SOMEBODY wasn't proofreading, and the finger of suspicion HAS TO point at our dear-departed Head of Department.
Well, you know, when you know you're leaving, such “minor details” just slip on by your attention ….
OK, so into this classroom where I had been summoned to, and to what I was saying about the wording of the question. The wording was BAD! It started off OK informing students they had to “Write a summary of 6 to 10 words”. OK, good start. But the next sentence told them to “Paraphrase the vocabulary”. The next two sentences told them, “Do not copy any of the original text” (good!) and the last sentence was the worst of all. It stated that they should, “Leave a space between each of your sentences”.
Now, wait a minute here. They SHOULD have been writing a paragraph, should they not?? You would have thought so, and yet NO MENTION of the word “paragraph” in the question. There was one section of the coursebook where the requirement WAS to write a ten-sentence summary of the text, and in THAT question they DID have to specifically write each sentence on a new line. NOT as a paragraph! So THAT was what I thought the question must be meaning.
And THAT is what I told them to do. Write each sentence with a clear blank line separating each one, minimum six, maximum ten sentences. Number them if you want to. Because THAT is how the question wanted to be answered – well, that was MY interpretation.
Later on, I explained that same fact to our de-facto Head of Department and said that this was what I had told the students. Now, some students HAD written in paragraph form and some in separated-sentence form. Not very satisfactory, but as I pointed out there was no mention of the word “paragraph” anywhere.
This teacher colleague in question had criticised our own HoD for doing all the Pre-Clinical exams by himself with THOSE resulting question errors. Now he had done the SAME THING himself.
A simple bit of proofreading would have eliminated such mistakes I'm sure. And in the end-semester final exams I do not think that such mistakes reflect well on the English department. OK, in individual class quizzes they are less vital, but the Final Exams are the things that count for the most marks.
Another minus point for this “fine educational institute” that I work in (for another 18 days) …
Ach, WHO BLOODY CARES? Doesn't matter to me now cos HEE! HEE! in eighteen short and sweet days I am well and truly OUTTA HERE!
All I have to do now is fill in the three grade sheets for each of my classes … which led to another tricky problem. And ONCE AGAIN it involved our soon-to-be-departed hospital colleague. Now, since he couldn't teach his class, they were divided up and we all got an extra 5 or 6 students each as you know. HOWEVER, for the purpose of filling in this Final Grading Sheet (the 'Long Sheet' as it was known as it was foolscap paper size), we needed his marks for quizzes and tests for those students in HIS class.
He didn't have them. He had already shredded all the quizzes and progress test papers even before the end of semester. So what had he done with the marks? Nope, he did NOT have them on his flash drive. Ohh, but where WERE THEY?
The story is, as I understand it, that he had used one computer to save the spreadsheets on that contained all these marks. When he came to find them, HEY PRESTO they had 'magically' vanished!
No, he did not have them on either his own personal flash drive NOR his laptop at home. In short, he had no backup of them at all! ALL his marks had gone – no copies on paper even and no old tests to refer to as they had gone to the shredder LONG AGO!
The more and more time goes on, the chinks in this guy's armoury become bigger holes and now he has BIG dirty-great holes in the armoury. He always portrays himself as being professional and generally as knowing what he is doing. But COME ON!! WHAT A BASIC THING NOT TO DO! NO RECORD ANYWHERE of your own students' marks!!
Well, like it or not, he would have to either find them or search his memory to “recreate” them. But what did he spend his time doing? Running around trying to find out WHY they had disappeared and WHO had deleted them! HOW IS THAT GONNA HELP YOU MATEY! You got to come up with these pretty damn quickly because there are FOUR of your teacher colleagues who NEED those marks.
There again, you see. Because of his irresponsible actions (you think that word is too strong? Well, I DON'T!), he could be dropping his colleagues in the “smelly brown stuff”.
As far as I was concerned, if he had no marks to give then I would simply marks all his students as having zero for the semester and HE would take the rap for it!
OK OK guys – no of course I am NOT in any way the perfect guy or the perfect teacher. I don't try to be either. But FOR GOODNESS SAKE! There are BASIC things that you just HAVE TO take care of and this is ONE of them.
OK OK OKAYYYY! I should have more sympathy with the guy since he has had his spell in hospital. But he was fine when he went and shredded his test papers, WASN'T HE? And quite well when he didn't think where he went and stored his marks, DON'T YOU AGREE?
The answer to that is WHO KNOWS? Here is the guy who STILL claims he never had any discipline problems in his soldier boy class. The one who says he hates the college but not Saudi Arabia. The very man who does take a lot of time preparing extra materials for his classes. Ah, but WAIT! In doing these “extra materials”, he neglected to do what the syllabus said meaning that when his students came to our classes they had NOT done most of the grammar book and almost NONE of the very good writing book. This is also the guy whose classroom desk was in a complete mess with papers absolutely EVERYWHERE all over it when it had to be cleared.
Sorry, but I don't think he is so hot-shot organised as all THAT that he makes himself out to be. All this about being Director of Studies here and there. All this about his 35 years of teaching (which he HIMSELF said was not a COMPLETE 35 teaching years but was broken into many parts). And all this mocking of me for “not understanding” how things are out here!
The guy is 58 years old and knows he is going nowhere else as far as employment goes. Oh, but he could get a job back home in Holland, he says. I doubt THAT too. So WHY is he staying here in a country he has increasingly moaned at as time has gone on? Sure beats me!
We English teachers are an imperfect bunch it has to be said. Some would say we do this because we can do little else. There is some element of truth in that in some cases. But there are BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL things that DO need doing in the job whether that is the admin side or the classroom side.
Do I do them all? No, I do not, but I AM confident that I DO get the basics right.
OK, enough about that. He HAS now produced a “piece of paper” with some “marks” on which I have duly added to my grading sheet for “his” students. Actually what the TRUTH of these is not my concern – I am just going to write them down and be done with it!
Eighteen days … eighteen days … OHHH ONLY EIGHTEEN DAYS!!!
Yesss! We are into the final month of my desert life out here in Saudi Arabia. And as the weeks go it is more and more satisfying to walk over to the college knowing that such short trips are to end soon. Right now is exam season for all students. I like this time of year. It is like “handover time” where you as the teacher have done your stuff and now comes the great “leveller” that is the exam itself. No more moaning to you if they get bad marks, no disputing the answers, no, “WHY did you only give me 16 out of 20?”, moaners and groaners.
Well, there IS still that thing called “marking” to do but really that is not much of a chore because I know in my mind that it is the last time I will be doing it for a while. And I am very pleased to say that I HAVE finished all my marking already and all I have to do now is fill in the grading sheets, get them signed and then file away the tests either in my filing drawer or back in the Registry Department where they must be signed back in.
And what of the exams? Well, I mentioned last time about the mistakes on the pre-clinical exam. Ahh but that is NOT where it ends for I have also been involved in the 2nd year CLINICAL exam, which basically was a summary writing exercise as I have tried to do with them all year.
Sadly/Embarrassingly/Farcically there were problems with THAT exam too. Although I was involved in the writing of it, all I had to do was write a sample answer. I did offer some help in the form of texts that could have been used, but this was rejected by the other guy I was to do the tests with. OK, I thought, if you want to keep it to yourself, you can do so.
Well, his instructions for what to do were EXTREMELY confusing. I was assigned as “examiner” yesterday which meant that I did not sit in the classroom all the time but was only required in the first 10-15 minutes or so in case of student questions. Yes, they have two different roles here of “examiner” and “invigilator” which makes sense as an invigilator can go anywhere to any exam and need not know about the subject. But they consider here that students ARE allowed to ask the examiner to clarify what the question is asking them to do. I myself think even THAT is questionable since understanding and interpreting the question is all part of doing the exam. BUT, of course, these are foreign language students doing an exam written ENTIRELY in English so I suppose there is a case to justify having such an “examiner” present. The examiner IS a teacher of that year and of that subject. So, for example, yesterday I was assigned as “examiner” to three rooms where students were taking Clinical writing exams of what I had been doing that year with MY Clinical class and so I could advise if there were problems.
Well, it was not even two minutes past nine o'clock and the phone rang in the English department. I was just ready to go up there anyway, but there was a call STRAIGHT AWAY that my help was needed! Seemed odd that the exam had only JUST BEGUN and there was a problem.
Up I went and to the room I had been called to. There were five or six students who had questions, and all of those questions were similar. And when I looked at the wording of the question, I KNEW I was in for a bad time.
Oh, but BEFORE I'd even ENTERED any classroom I was confronted by the College registrar in the corridor asking how long this particular exam was. I was rather confused and answered that it was 2 hours like all of them. Well, on the exam paper it says 1 hour 30 minutes, he said. OK, I said, if that is what the paper says, then that is what it is. “Isn't this a unified course?”, he asked me. Didn't understand why he was asking that so I answered that yes, for sure it is. He repeated his question of how long the exam was and I repeated my answer, and then AGAIN he repeated the question about it being a “unified course” or not. WHY on earth is he asking me this question more than once, I thought.
I only found out much later that SOME of the exam papers said “2 HOURS” on the cover, while others said “1 HOUR 30 MINUTES”!! SOMEBODY wasn't proofreading, and the finger of suspicion HAS TO point at our dear-departed Head of Department.
Well, you know, when you know you're leaving, such “minor details” just slip on by your attention ….
OK, so into this classroom where I had been summoned to, and to what I was saying about the wording of the question. The wording was BAD! It started off OK informing students they had to “Write a summary of 6 to 10 words”. OK, good start. But the next sentence told them to “Paraphrase the vocabulary”. The next two sentences told them, “Do not copy any of the original text” (good!) and the last sentence was the worst of all. It stated that they should, “Leave a space between each of your sentences”.
Now, wait a minute here. They SHOULD have been writing a paragraph, should they not?? You would have thought so, and yet NO MENTION of the word “paragraph” in the question. There was one section of the coursebook where the requirement WAS to write a ten-sentence summary of the text, and in THAT question they DID have to specifically write each sentence on a new line. NOT as a paragraph! So THAT was what I thought the question must be meaning.
And THAT is what I told them to do. Write each sentence with a clear blank line separating each one, minimum six, maximum ten sentences. Number them if you want to. Because THAT is how the question wanted to be answered – well, that was MY interpretation.
Later on, I explained that same fact to our de-facto Head of Department and said that this was what I had told the students. Now, some students HAD written in paragraph form and some in separated-sentence form. Not very satisfactory, but as I pointed out there was no mention of the word “paragraph” anywhere.
This teacher colleague in question had criticised our own HoD for doing all the Pre-Clinical exams by himself with THOSE resulting question errors. Now he had done the SAME THING himself.
A simple bit of proofreading would have eliminated such mistakes I'm sure. And in the end-semester final exams I do not think that such mistakes reflect well on the English department. OK, in individual class quizzes they are less vital, but the Final Exams are the things that count for the most marks.
Another minus point for this “fine educational institute” that I work in (for another 18 days) …
Ach, WHO BLOODY CARES? Doesn't matter to me now cos HEE! HEE! in eighteen short and sweet days I am well and truly OUTTA HERE!
All I have to do now is fill in the three grade sheets for each of my classes … which led to another tricky problem. And ONCE AGAIN it involved our soon-to-be-departed hospital colleague. Now, since he couldn't teach his class, they were divided up and we all got an extra 5 or 6 students each as you know. HOWEVER, for the purpose of filling in this Final Grading Sheet (the 'Long Sheet' as it was known as it was foolscap paper size), we needed his marks for quizzes and tests for those students in HIS class.
He didn't have them. He had already shredded all the quizzes and progress test papers even before the end of semester. So what had he done with the marks? Nope, he did NOT have them on his flash drive. Ohh, but where WERE THEY?
The story is, as I understand it, that he had used one computer to save the spreadsheets on that contained all these marks. When he came to find them, HEY PRESTO they had 'magically' vanished!
No, he did not have them on either his own personal flash drive NOR his laptop at home. In short, he had no backup of them at all! ALL his marks had gone – no copies on paper even and no old tests to refer to as they had gone to the shredder LONG AGO!
The more and more time goes on, the chinks in this guy's armoury become bigger holes and now he has BIG dirty-great holes in the armoury. He always portrays himself as being professional and generally as knowing what he is doing. But COME ON!! WHAT A BASIC THING NOT TO DO! NO RECORD ANYWHERE of your own students' marks!!
Well, like it or not, he would have to either find them or search his memory to “recreate” them. But what did he spend his time doing? Running around trying to find out WHY they had disappeared and WHO had deleted them! HOW IS THAT GONNA HELP YOU MATEY! You got to come up with these pretty damn quickly because there are FOUR of your teacher colleagues who NEED those marks.
There again, you see. Because of his irresponsible actions (you think that word is too strong? Well, I DON'T!), he could be dropping his colleagues in the “smelly brown stuff”.
As far as I was concerned, if he had no marks to give then I would simply marks all his students as having zero for the semester and HE would take the rap for it!
OK OK guys – no of course I am NOT in any way the perfect guy or the perfect teacher. I don't try to be either. But FOR GOODNESS SAKE! There are BASIC things that you just HAVE TO take care of and this is ONE of them.
OK OK OKAYYYY! I should have more sympathy with the guy since he has had his spell in hospital. But he was fine when he went and shredded his test papers, WASN'T HE? And quite well when he didn't think where he went and stored his marks, DON'T YOU AGREE?
The answer to that is WHO KNOWS? Here is the guy who STILL claims he never had any discipline problems in his soldier boy class. The one who says he hates the college but not Saudi Arabia. The very man who does take a lot of time preparing extra materials for his classes. Ah, but WAIT! In doing these “extra materials”, he neglected to do what the syllabus said meaning that when his students came to our classes they had NOT done most of the grammar book and almost NONE of the very good writing book. This is also the guy whose classroom desk was in a complete mess with papers absolutely EVERYWHERE all over it when it had to be cleared.
Sorry, but I don't think he is so hot-shot organised as all THAT that he makes himself out to be. All this about being Director of Studies here and there. All this about his 35 years of teaching (which he HIMSELF said was not a COMPLETE 35 teaching years but was broken into many parts). And all this mocking of me for “not understanding” how things are out here!
The guy is 58 years old and knows he is going nowhere else as far as employment goes. Oh, but he could get a job back home in Holland, he says. I doubt THAT too. So WHY is he staying here in a country he has increasingly moaned at as time has gone on? Sure beats me!
We English teachers are an imperfect bunch it has to be said. Some would say we do this because we can do little else. There is some element of truth in that in some cases. But there are BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL things that DO need doing in the job whether that is the admin side or the classroom side.
Do I do them all? No, I do not, but I AM confident that I DO get the basics right.
OK, enough about that. He HAS now produced a “piece of paper” with some “marks” on which I have duly added to my grading sheet for “his” students. Actually what the TRUTH of these is not my concern – I am just going to write them down and be done with it!
Eighteen days … eighteen days … OHHH ONLY EIGHTEEN DAYS!!!
Friday, 29 January 2010
Rambling On .... in and out of the Classroom
Friday 29th January 2010
Well, it is either sit here and watch more of Tony Blair talking about everything and nothing in the Iraq Enquiry or do some blogging. Which is more likely to interest me? Well, such public enquiries can be interesting if what people SAY in them IS interesting. Those who like to analyse such things will be enthralled at seeing Blair squirm in his chair. I am less so.
Now, I should warn you that there WILL be quite an element of positivity in today's blog, and compared to last time's rant it will be like sunshine after the rain. But I am sitting here having fully completed ALL my teaching here in Saudi Arabia. Yes, THAT was, in fact, completed last Monday 25th January. But ohhh – what a week it was. Have you met my students here – Al-Apathy and Al-Lethargy. Yes, they are not much fun. Now for those of you who don't get the joke, I should say that the majority of Saudi surnames are Al-.....(something). Apparently the “Al” part is only the equivalent of the definite article, “the”, in English. So their surnames could be something like, “the camel farmer”, “the market trader”, or whatever.
Even though it was the last week of teaching, it should have been an important one. It was meant as a week of final revision for the Second Midterm Exam which was on Tuesday. So you would naturally expect that students would want to come for those last three revision days and we could all study together and maybe I could help them in any last-minute language issues that would come up.
HAH! Not one bit of it! Attendance was patchy as it had been the week before and, indeed, a large number of weeks leading up to this final revision week. Did they not WANT to revise? Some suggested they might stay at home and revise in their rooms. Maybe some did, but judging by the large numbers of latecomers who said they had been “sleeping” and believed they did no wrong, this explanation did not hold much water with me.
As I had supposed would happen, this class has rather gone down in terms of its motivation to learn. It seems to be a common thing out here, though you can't compare in ANY WAY with the soldier boys from before. Incidentally, those five soldier boys who joined my class from the dissolved one some time ago …. well they are useless and spend their time with either heads on desks, not showing up, playing with their phones, listening to music, or they just sit there doing nothing because they don't have pens or the right books. Deja vu if you ask me! Useless people, and they will always remain this way. Even the one guy who had been the best by FAR in that class of mine is now a lost cause and hardly ever comes to class.
Well, with 30 people in that classroom now, I can leave them be and just go see the ones who NEED my help and happily ignore others who do not care. And anyway, my attitude was, “Well with only a few weeks to go, if you do not put the effort in now, then you do not interest me”.
Nothing much else happened in those last two weeks just gone. Gave them their last “quiz” test which was just 5 multi-choice questions. The results were pretty good with one-third of the class being in the top 25 percent of the marks. So that was satisfying for me.
There was one slight irritation these last two weeks. Well, you know how “organised” and “forward planned” these Saudis are here. More evidence of that. Well, there were fifteen weeks in this Semester 2. In Week 14 out of 15 the Dean of the College “suddenly” notices that attendance is slipping. Indeed he is right. But it is the end of the semester. WHY ON EARTH has he not acted before now? So what did he decide in his great wisdom? Well, we were required to hand in a photocopy of the class register every day at the end of lessons to the HoD. Quite WHAT he was going to do one week before Midterm Exams is beyond me, and any people who were lagging behind in attendance would surely not be dealt with now. The time to act should have been the halfway point of the semester perhaps – a more logical place. Ahh – but here you see the flaw – the words “logical” and “sensible” simply do NOT apply out here since it is NEITHER! Anyway, I duly did this.
Well, there is little more to say except about the Midterm Exam session itself. This was done in the “mess hall” which was the same location as used for the end semester military exam just before the summer. A total of 120 students were squeezed in here, and they had to extend the seating area back to the tables at the back of the room normally used for mealtimes. Was OK except it meant these students on these tables were seated rather too close together so had to be watched more closely. But overall there was little dubious activity going on and most people stayed to near the end. One thing that irritated me – the college registrar was there. Even AFTER the exam had started he was going around calling out names of people who had not yet signed in. WHY DISTURB THEM AFTER EXAM START? This continued for far too long. Oh, and also at the start the students had got in and got sat down but then were told to get up and move so they were sitting together in rows with their classmates. The idea there was so that collection of papers would be made easier but still it made no sense to disturb them JUST BEFORE the start of this big stressful exam. In such a stressful exam situation, the last thing people want is extra and unnecessary stresses.
Away from teaching now. I am nearing the “three week mark” in terms of the Exit Procedure that I am in now. In the “seven week mark” just gone I had to go inform Leave And Travel of my leaving plans and I was able to collect the first few signatures for my list. Some of them were unnecessary – I had to visit the Hospital Laundry room and I discovered for the first time where the Hospital Medical Library was. Both needed a signature even though I had never been to either before.
But I didn't mind. This kind of thing is only there to annoy and is a kind of “mission impossible” with the countdown clock progressing. The list looks long at first sight, but in fact everything I have to do is laid out clearly. On Saturday I have to go hand in my “iqama” for the processing of my final Exit Visa and I also have to arrange for Housing Inspection to be done where they check that you haven't sneaked the bath tub or TV into your luggage before departure. Anyway, I am progressing through this nicely, and the most of the action takes place inside the final week where keys, ID and all are handed in and I have to arrange transportation to the airport.
I treat it all as an amusing game more than anything else. Compared to what I had to supply for getting the Polish “karta pobytu” (residency card) some years ago, this is all a BREEZE. Ohh THAT list of documents was nearly a full A4 page long and NOTHING will ever top THAT in terms of the ridiculous bureaucracy it was. I do not object to form-filling or getting stamps or that sort of thing. It's all a game, and one which THEY believe you will not win but one that you always DO!
Another thing I have been trying to do is sell the things which I cannot take with me out of Saudi Arabia. These include my coffee maker, juice maker, MP3 player, internet USB plugin modem, unused tube of sunblock cream and 110V-220V transformer. So far I have only managed to get rid of the MP3 player, and I think that is all I will manage. I suppose I will have to leave the coffee maker and juice maker here since they are 110V mains voltage only. Even if I DID take them, somebody who did not know they were 110V might try to use them with disastrous results. And they were both cheap so it is no great loss. The sunblock cream I can sell online since it is a well-known brand. The voltage transformer I will have to just keep – it might be useful someday. The internet modem I may be able to get unlocked which will mean I can use it with ANY simcard ANYWHERE. It is made by a well-known firm so surely I can get that done somewhere though hopefully not too expensively. I made up a list to put, firstly, on the staffroom noticeboard and then decided to put it on other college and hospital noticeboards. Well, I have had precisely ONE PHONE CALL from somebody who asked if I was selling a laptop or a stereo!! So I don't suppose anything else will go. But one annoyance was that I put it on the noticeboard in the staff entrance to the hospital only to see it had been REMOVED the next day! Why? Don't know, but POSSIBLY because when I pinned it to the board it SLIGHLY overlapped with the full colour notices advertising the various conferences coming up in the hospital in the near future. And yes, I did have to go get the “official” stamp from the Security men before sticking it on noticeboards.
Speaking of phone calls, I do (as other teachers do) get wrong number phone calls every now and then. But what amazes me is that you get the SAME PERSON calling you wrongly two or three times. I have had one man call me THREE TIMES now over the space of a week asking for “Dr Ahmed”. Do they never learn?
We have had quite a problem this last two weeks with the air conditioning in our rooms. Not just a few, but we are talking about four or five WHOLE ACCOMODATION BLOCKS! What has been going on? Well, it was something they did first with the routine annual electrical supply maintenance followed by, I think, the cleaning of aircon filters which involved turning the aircon water off too. So for the last two weeks (ending the night of Monday 25th) we had NO AIRCONDITIONING AT ALL! Well, when I say “none” I mean that, yes, the aircon WAS on but that there was no cool air coming out. It was just an “air blower”, and so the room just heated up and up. They say that they did it at THIS time of year because it is winter and the temperatures are cooler. But PHEW! Sure didn't seem that way to me! The only way to survive was to sit around in boxer shorts only because if you had even a T-SHIRT and JOGGING BOTTOMS on then you were WELL OVERHEATED. Unfortunately I do not possess any kind of desktop fan so OHHH I was baking hot. Well, it was not summer heat – rather was like a regular humid midsummer day back in Europe. I alternated between having the “blower” air conditioning on and off – I needed the air to move but not to be blown by hot air.
Two things happened recently which are things I always thought MIGHT or WOULD happen some day but hoped they wouldn't. The first happened about a month ago now and it involved my keys … or rather NOT having them. Well, it was a weekday and I HAD TO go down town to the Mobily internet people since I had ONCE AGAIN run out of quota on my 5GB package (more on this later). VERY annoying! Anyway, I had called for the taxi beforehand and had been waiting. My bag was ready and my neck keychain with keys and ID card was sitting on the side also ready. OK, so the call came that the taxi was here, so I grabbed my bag and out I went closing the door behind me.
Instantly I closed the door I KNEW my keys were not with me. YES, they were INSIDE THE ROOM sitting there on the side where I had left them! I tried the door but it is a handle you can open only from inside. Shit, I thought! Well, the taxi was waiting so I had to go on and later I would have to go to Security as my colleague had done once before. Ohh, but I was SO ANNOYED at myself! I did my business in Mobily and went around Carrefour, but all the time this keys problem was in my head and I felt that I shouldn't be messing around here while I had no keys to my room. Security might be closed if I was too late back and THEN WHAT? So I called the taxi again and back I soon went less than an hour after getting into town.
Nobody asked me for ID at the main gate (just as well!), and at the second gate I got out and paid the taxi driver there. Into the room at the gate where all security men sit, and I explained my problem. As I was telling them, there was a smile as if to say, “Ohh here's ANOTHER idiot locked out of his room!”. Yes, indeed I DID feel like an idiot!
It was no big deal though. All I had to do was go with the security guy in his MARKED Security car so he could get his set of master keys, and then he took me to my room and it was unlocked and in I went. PHEW!
Now, notice how I emphasised that it was a “marked security car”. Yes, it is a BIG car with lights on top and “SECURITY” in big letters on the side. Easy to spot .... and yes I was spotted in it by one of my colleagues. UNFORTUNATELY this particular guy is one who loves to gossip and loves to make up and exaggerate details. Well, in this boring life we lead, such “creativity” adds to your dull life I suppose! And so the word got around that I had been “manhandled” or had been “arrested” or other such things – NONE of which had, of course, happened. When I got in, a short time later one of my colleagues phoned me to ask if I was OK because I had been seen, and I was happy to explain. All very innocent!
Although a little bit of gossip does not hurt, I was quite annoyed at the ridiculous way the story had been SO exaggerated. But THIS is what comes when you have nothing else better to do in your boring little life than to “make things up”. So THAT is why soap operas are so popular, is it?
The other thing that happened involved my kettle and the electric hobs we have here. And AGAIN it is a thing that is easily done if care is not taken. And it COULD have been more serious had I not noticed it in time.
Boiled the kettle for some tea and took the kettle off. The thing with electric cookers is that even when you turn them off, the hob rings stay heated and do not go off instantly as with gas cookers. What I ALWAYS do is remove the kettle and put in on the second hob ring which has been off all the time, and then I turn off at the front. Ah HAH, but THIS is what I obviously FORGOT to do THIS TIME! Electric hobs make no noise as gas cookers do, so there is no indication that they are still on except by sight. So I was drinking my tea and I was on the internet and doing other things with, of course, my back to the cooker. There was no smell or anything. But a bit later when I went back over that way I saw it WAS ON and was VERY HOT and VERY ORANGE.
My box of cereal was nearby. I used to keep the currently-open box of cereal up on top next to the cooker as it is a convenient place for it. It WAS near this hob ring and had started to go a bit brown. I turned off the hob ring straight away and took this box out of the way. There was a slight smell of plastic, though |I was not sure where from. I realised the next morning that it must be from the plastic bag inside the cereal box which had probably started to MELT.
So …. a case of PHEW! If I had gone out and left this in this way, then a fire would surely have been the result.
I don't keep cereal boxes on top now. And I ALWAYS check that I turn off the hob ring. And I DEFINITELY check that I have my keys around my neck BEFORE stepping outside my door.
If it takes an “emergency situation” to make me more careful, then these two were surely IT!
Ohh, I nearly forgot. The last thing today is all about my internet. Usually, as you know, I am on the 5GB package which is usually plenty for a given month. But recently I seem to be running out far too often and it is annoying when I have to make an extra trip into town. Such a situation happened at the start of this month. In December I had to make TWO SEPARATE trips into town because my internet had run out unexpectedly early. And there is no good arguing with them because THEY have the counter and you do not. Well there IS a counter that comes with the internet modem package but I think it only counts how much you use on HTTP connections (ie, website surfing only – NOT FTP or other downloading or uploading). So anyway, at end of December I decide to try the 1GB package just because I wanted to see how long it lasted and because I objected to paying ANOTHER big lot of money for lousy service once again. I paid and then got home to use it.
Well, in UNDER TEN DAYS it had already expired and I was barely into January!
On the same day as the “keys incident” (earlier) I had to decide what to do. I thought to myself that as I had only just over a month to go, maybe I could try one month of unlimited use. Using this, I could download what I liked and get everything I wanted to before leaving here. After all, I have no idea what internet facilities I will have access to after I'm done here.
Well, it is a LOT of money going the “unlimited way”! Having paid that, I did not much feel inclined to buy anything else, and even though I needed a haircut I did not want to pay the Rashid Mall prices.
Well, so far it has certainly been a good investment! I have INDEED got a lot of stuff done and have not had to worry about my gigabyte entitlement expiring before month end. When payment time comes around again, it will be the last time and then I WILL only get the 1GB package and will do NO DOWNLOADING at all and will ONLY do regular surfing. It will only be for a week and a half, so I should be OK with that.
Ahh, I mentioned the barber. Well, last Saturday I got the hair well and truly CUT! How long was it? FAR TOO LONG, and the last time I had it cut must've been …. well, FAR TOO LONG AGO. I intended to go just before the New Year but the barber went on holiday.
And that brings me to the last “blab” for today. Just before New Year when I was standing there outside the barber shop waiting for him, I got bitten by A MOSQUITO! Mosquitoes in Saudi Arabia?? Surely it is too dry, you say! Well, I thought so too so I was rather surprised to see these three little critters biting me. Got me a bit worried too as I wondered about malaria. But on getting home and checking online, I found there is no malaria in THIS part of the country (though there can be further south in the mountains).
OK OK this has been a rather directionless blog today so I'll stop there and not waste a MOMENT MORE of your precious time. See you next time!
Well, it is either sit here and watch more of Tony Blair talking about everything and nothing in the Iraq Enquiry or do some blogging. Which is more likely to interest me? Well, such public enquiries can be interesting if what people SAY in them IS interesting. Those who like to analyse such things will be enthralled at seeing Blair squirm in his chair. I am less so.
Now, I should warn you that there WILL be quite an element of positivity in today's blog, and compared to last time's rant it will be like sunshine after the rain. But I am sitting here having fully completed ALL my teaching here in Saudi Arabia. Yes, THAT was, in fact, completed last Monday 25th January. But ohhh – what a week it was. Have you met my students here – Al-Apathy and Al-Lethargy. Yes, they are not much fun. Now for those of you who don't get the joke, I should say that the majority of Saudi surnames are Al-.....(something). Apparently the “Al” part is only the equivalent of the definite article, “the”, in English. So their surnames could be something like, “the camel farmer”, “the market trader”, or whatever.
Even though it was the last week of teaching, it should have been an important one. It was meant as a week of final revision for the Second Midterm Exam which was on Tuesday. So you would naturally expect that students would want to come for those last three revision days and we could all study together and maybe I could help them in any last-minute language issues that would come up.
HAH! Not one bit of it! Attendance was patchy as it had been the week before and, indeed, a large number of weeks leading up to this final revision week. Did they not WANT to revise? Some suggested they might stay at home and revise in their rooms. Maybe some did, but judging by the large numbers of latecomers who said they had been “sleeping” and believed they did no wrong, this explanation did not hold much water with me.
As I had supposed would happen, this class has rather gone down in terms of its motivation to learn. It seems to be a common thing out here, though you can't compare in ANY WAY with the soldier boys from before. Incidentally, those five soldier boys who joined my class from the dissolved one some time ago …. well they are useless and spend their time with either heads on desks, not showing up, playing with their phones, listening to music, or they just sit there doing nothing because they don't have pens or the right books. Deja vu if you ask me! Useless people, and they will always remain this way. Even the one guy who had been the best by FAR in that class of mine is now a lost cause and hardly ever comes to class.
Well, with 30 people in that classroom now, I can leave them be and just go see the ones who NEED my help and happily ignore others who do not care. And anyway, my attitude was, “Well with only a few weeks to go, if you do not put the effort in now, then you do not interest me”.
Nothing much else happened in those last two weeks just gone. Gave them their last “quiz” test which was just 5 multi-choice questions. The results were pretty good with one-third of the class being in the top 25 percent of the marks. So that was satisfying for me.
There was one slight irritation these last two weeks. Well, you know how “organised” and “forward planned” these Saudis are here. More evidence of that. Well, there were fifteen weeks in this Semester 2. In Week 14 out of 15 the Dean of the College “suddenly” notices that attendance is slipping. Indeed he is right. But it is the end of the semester. WHY ON EARTH has he not acted before now? So what did he decide in his great wisdom? Well, we were required to hand in a photocopy of the class register every day at the end of lessons to the HoD. Quite WHAT he was going to do one week before Midterm Exams is beyond me, and any people who were lagging behind in attendance would surely not be dealt with now. The time to act should have been the halfway point of the semester perhaps – a more logical place. Ahh – but here you see the flaw – the words “logical” and “sensible” simply do NOT apply out here since it is NEITHER! Anyway, I duly did this.
Well, there is little more to say except about the Midterm Exam session itself. This was done in the “mess hall” which was the same location as used for the end semester military exam just before the summer. A total of 120 students were squeezed in here, and they had to extend the seating area back to the tables at the back of the room normally used for mealtimes. Was OK except it meant these students on these tables were seated rather too close together so had to be watched more closely. But overall there was little dubious activity going on and most people stayed to near the end. One thing that irritated me – the college registrar was there. Even AFTER the exam had started he was going around calling out names of people who had not yet signed in. WHY DISTURB THEM AFTER EXAM START? This continued for far too long. Oh, and also at the start the students had got in and got sat down but then were told to get up and move so they were sitting together in rows with their classmates. The idea there was so that collection of papers would be made easier but still it made no sense to disturb them JUST BEFORE the start of this big stressful exam. In such a stressful exam situation, the last thing people want is extra and unnecessary stresses.
Away from teaching now. I am nearing the “three week mark” in terms of the Exit Procedure that I am in now. In the “seven week mark” just gone I had to go inform Leave And Travel of my leaving plans and I was able to collect the first few signatures for my list. Some of them were unnecessary – I had to visit the Hospital Laundry room and I discovered for the first time where the Hospital Medical Library was. Both needed a signature even though I had never been to either before.
But I didn't mind. This kind of thing is only there to annoy and is a kind of “mission impossible” with the countdown clock progressing. The list looks long at first sight, but in fact everything I have to do is laid out clearly. On Saturday I have to go hand in my “iqama” for the processing of my final Exit Visa and I also have to arrange for Housing Inspection to be done where they check that you haven't sneaked the bath tub or TV into your luggage before departure. Anyway, I am progressing through this nicely, and the most of the action takes place inside the final week where keys, ID and all are handed in and I have to arrange transportation to the airport.
I treat it all as an amusing game more than anything else. Compared to what I had to supply for getting the Polish “karta pobytu” (residency card) some years ago, this is all a BREEZE. Ohh THAT list of documents was nearly a full A4 page long and NOTHING will ever top THAT in terms of the ridiculous bureaucracy it was. I do not object to form-filling or getting stamps or that sort of thing. It's all a game, and one which THEY believe you will not win but one that you always DO!
Another thing I have been trying to do is sell the things which I cannot take with me out of Saudi Arabia. These include my coffee maker, juice maker, MP3 player, internet USB plugin modem, unused tube of sunblock cream and 110V-220V transformer. So far I have only managed to get rid of the MP3 player, and I think that is all I will manage. I suppose I will have to leave the coffee maker and juice maker here since they are 110V mains voltage only. Even if I DID take them, somebody who did not know they were 110V might try to use them with disastrous results. And they were both cheap so it is no great loss. The sunblock cream I can sell online since it is a well-known brand. The voltage transformer I will have to just keep – it might be useful someday. The internet modem I may be able to get unlocked which will mean I can use it with ANY simcard ANYWHERE. It is made by a well-known firm so surely I can get that done somewhere though hopefully not too expensively. I made up a list to put, firstly, on the staffroom noticeboard and then decided to put it on other college and hospital noticeboards. Well, I have had precisely ONE PHONE CALL from somebody who asked if I was selling a laptop or a stereo!! So I don't suppose anything else will go. But one annoyance was that I put it on the noticeboard in the staff entrance to the hospital only to see it had been REMOVED the next day! Why? Don't know, but POSSIBLY because when I pinned it to the board it SLIGHLY overlapped with the full colour notices advertising the various conferences coming up in the hospital in the near future. And yes, I did have to go get the “official” stamp from the Security men before sticking it on noticeboards.
Speaking of phone calls, I do (as other teachers do) get wrong number phone calls every now and then. But what amazes me is that you get the SAME PERSON calling you wrongly two or three times. I have had one man call me THREE TIMES now over the space of a week asking for “Dr Ahmed”. Do they never learn?
We have had quite a problem this last two weeks with the air conditioning in our rooms. Not just a few, but we are talking about four or five WHOLE ACCOMODATION BLOCKS! What has been going on? Well, it was something they did first with the routine annual electrical supply maintenance followed by, I think, the cleaning of aircon filters which involved turning the aircon water off too. So for the last two weeks (ending the night of Monday 25th) we had NO AIRCONDITIONING AT ALL! Well, when I say “none” I mean that, yes, the aircon WAS on but that there was no cool air coming out. It was just an “air blower”, and so the room just heated up and up. They say that they did it at THIS time of year because it is winter and the temperatures are cooler. But PHEW! Sure didn't seem that way to me! The only way to survive was to sit around in boxer shorts only because if you had even a T-SHIRT and JOGGING BOTTOMS on then you were WELL OVERHEATED. Unfortunately I do not possess any kind of desktop fan so OHHH I was baking hot. Well, it was not summer heat – rather was like a regular humid midsummer day back in Europe. I alternated between having the “blower” air conditioning on and off – I needed the air to move but not to be blown by hot air.
Two things happened recently which are things I always thought MIGHT or WOULD happen some day but hoped they wouldn't. The first happened about a month ago now and it involved my keys … or rather NOT having them. Well, it was a weekday and I HAD TO go down town to the Mobily internet people since I had ONCE AGAIN run out of quota on my 5GB package (more on this later). VERY annoying! Anyway, I had called for the taxi beforehand and had been waiting. My bag was ready and my neck keychain with keys and ID card was sitting on the side also ready. OK, so the call came that the taxi was here, so I grabbed my bag and out I went closing the door behind me.
Instantly I closed the door I KNEW my keys were not with me. YES, they were INSIDE THE ROOM sitting there on the side where I had left them! I tried the door but it is a handle you can open only from inside. Shit, I thought! Well, the taxi was waiting so I had to go on and later I would have to go to Security as my colleague had done once before. Ohh, but I was SO ANNOYED at myself! I did my business in Mobily and went around Carrefour, but all the time this keys problem was in my head and I felt that I shouldn't be messing around here while I had no keys to my room. Security might be closed if I was too late back and THEN WHAT? So I called the taxi again and back I soon went less than an hour after getting into town.
Nobody asked me for ID at the main gate (just as well!), and at the second gate I got out and paid the taxi driver there. Into the room at the gate where all security men sit, and I explained my problem. As I was telling them, there was a smile as if to say, “Ohh here's ANOTHER idiot locked out of his room!”. Yes, indeed I DID feel like an idiot!
It was no big deal though. All I had to do was go with the security guy in his MARKED Security car so he could get his set of master keys, and then he took me to my room and it was unlocked and in I went. PHEW!
Now, notice how I emphasised that it was a “marked security car”. Yes, it is a BIG car with lights on top and “SECURITY” in big letters on the side. Easy to spot .... and yes I was spotted in it by one of my colleagues. UNFORTUNATELY this particular guy is one who loves to gossip and loves to make up and exaggerate details. Well, in this boring life we lead, such “creativity” adds to your dull life I suppose! And so the word got around that I had been “manhandled” or had been “arrested” or other such things – NONE of which had, of course, happened. When I got in, a short time later one of my colleagues phoned me to ask if I was OK because I had been seen, and I was happy to explain. All very innocent!
Although a little bit of gossip does not hurt, I was quite annoyed at the ridiculous way the story had been SO exaggerated. But THIS is what comes when you have nothing else better to do in your boring little life than to “make things up”. So THAT is why soap operas are so popular, is it?
The other thing that happened involved my kettle and the electric hobs we have here. And AGAIN it is a thing that is easily done if care is not taken. And it COULD have been more serious had I not noticed it in time.
Boiled the kettle for some tea and took the kettle off. The thing with electric cookers is that even when you turn them off, the hob rings stay heated and do not go off instantly as with gas cookers. What I ALWAYS do is remove the kettle and put in on the second hob ring which has been off all the time, and then I turn off at the front. Ah HAH, but THIS is what I obviously FORGOT to do THIS TIME! Electric hobs make no noise as gas cookers do, so there is no indication that they are still on except by sight. So I was drinking my tea and I was on the internet and doing other things with, of course, my back to the cooker. There was no smell or anything. But a bit later when I went back over that way I saw it WAS ON and was VERY HOT and VERY ORANGE.
My box of cereal was nearby. I used to keep the currently-open box of cereal up on top next to the cooker as it is a convenient place for it. It WAS near this hob ring and had started to go a bit brown. I turned off the hob ring straight away and took this box out of the way. There was a slight smell of plastic, though |I was not sure where from. I realised the next morning that it must be from the plastic bag inside the cereal box which had probably started to MELT.
So …. a case of PHEW! If I had gone out and left this in this way, then a fire would surely have been the result.
I don't keep cereal boxes on top now. And I ALWAYS check that I turn off the hob ring. And I DEFINITELY check that I have my keys around my neck BEFORE stepping outside my door.
If it takes an “emergency situation” to make me more careful, then these two were surely IT!
Ohh, I nearly forgot. The last thing today is all about my internet. Usually, as you know, I am on the 5GB package which is usually plenty for a given month. But recently I seem to be running out far too often and it is annoying when I have to make an extra trip into town. Such a situation happened at the start of this month. In December I had to make TWO SEPARATE trips into town because my internet had run out unexpectedly early. And there is no good arguing with them because THEY have the counter and you do not. Well there IS a counter that comes with the internet modem package but I think it only counts how much you use on HTTP connections (ie, website surfing only – NOT FTP or other downloading or uploading). So anyway, at end of December I decide to try the 1GB package just because I wanted to see how long it lasted and because I objected to paying ANOTHER big lot of money for lousy service once again. I paid and then got home to use it.
Well, in UNDER TEN DAYS it had already expired and I was barely into January!
On the same day as the “keys incident” (earlier) I had to decide what to do. I thought to myself that as I had only just over a month to go, maybe I could try one month of unlimited use. Using this, I could download what I liked and get everything I wanted to before leaving here. After all, I have no idea what internet facilities I will have access to after I'm done here.
Well, it is a LOT of money going the “unlimited way”! Having paid that, I did not much feel inclined to buy anything else, and even though I needed a haircut I did not want to pay the Rashid Mall prices.
Well, so far it has certainly been a good investment! I have INDEED got a lot of stuff done and have not had to worry about my gigabyte entitlement expiring before month end. When payment time comes around again, it will be the last time and then I WILL only get the 1GB package and will do NO DOWNLOADING at all and will ONLY do regular surfing. It will only be for a week and a half, so I should be OK with that.
Ahh, I mentioned the barber. Well, last Saturday I got the hair well and truly CUT! How long was it? FAR TOO LONG, and the last time I had it cut must've been …. well, FAR TOO LONG AGO. I intended to go just before the New Year but the barber went on holiday.
And that brings me to the last “blab” for today. Just before New Year when I was standing there outside the barber shop waiting for him, I got bitten by A MOSQUITO! Mosquitoes in Saudi Arabia?? Surely it is too dry, you say! Well, I thought so too so I was rather surprised to see these three little critters biting me. Got me a bit worried too as I wondered about malaria. But on getting home and checking online, I found there is no malaria in THIS part of the country (though there can be further south in the mountains).
OK OK this has been a rather directionless blog today so I'll stop there and not waste a MOMENT MORE of your precious time. See you next time!
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