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”!