Settling In

After four weeks of turmoil, it seems I am finally settling in here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Some milestones have been reached, the most significant of which is that I now have my Iqama, or residence permit. It is much like a green card in the United States; the difference is the Saudi Aramco wants me to be here whereas while the employers I had in the United States were not looking for a permanent employee. The Iqama makes things much easier, especially at traffic stops - like the ones just at the edge of Dhahran where every so often they insist on full documentation in the form of a Saudi National ID Card, Iqama, or Passport. I've only encountered one scenario when they asked for more than my Aramco ID ... which is another milestone - I now have my permanent Saudi Aramco ID. This is as good as an Iqama for identification almost anywhere in the Eastern Province. This means I am finally able to travel easily in the Kingdom! With the Iqama, I also had to go to the bank to convert my account from a temporary to a permanent account, which gives me Internet banking at last, just in time to get paid next week! The other things in the works now are my multiple entry Saudi Visa for exit and re-entry, a Bahrain Causeway Passport Book to avoid filling my passport with stamps (they are apparently very prolific an use a full page each direction of cross, hence the causeway booklets. The other thing in the works is my Saudi Driver's license - the company is translating my Texas driver's license and I have all the other documents ready. Hopefully next weekend I will be in Bahrain for a change in culture!

The other great highlight is having the moped - a cool little Honda Dio with a whopping 125cc two-stroke engine - which is capable of up to 65 km/h, which just happens to be the highest speed limit in Dhahran Camp! This is significant because they take safety very seriously to the point that any traffic violation in the Kingdom is also part of my employment record - and if I get too many safety violations, including minor traffic offenses, this can reduce any annual merit increase. It is a novel approach but it does preserve the suburban hell utopia here which is like the horrific wonderful experience of places like The Woodlands with the insidious  helpful home owners association - which here is the camp security rather than a bunch of crazy homeowners with nothing better to do with there time ... still it is generally good, but it does require transportation.

This week also marked my first time exercising here - the moped made this possible. I went to the nearest pool, which just happens to be a nice facility with two 25 meter pools, one of which is kept cool for competitive swimming. A great pool - so great it showed how awful my fitness is now in a mere 400m (16 lengths). I need to get better at this and exercise ... there is also a gym there and I can ride my bicycle there too (which is now safe enough to ride, except I have no lights for night - yet).

Last night I attended the Dhahran Toastmasters group which was really impressive! One of the largest Toastmasters groups I have seen and some terrific mentors within the group. There are some fabulous speakers there, one of whom did a long speech/presentation for us that was very interesting! The two prepared speeches were also very good, and the feedback to the speakers incredibly targeted to help them improve fast. Very impressive considering most of the people in the room are not native English speakers!

On the topic of language, I am finally working with my Rosetta Stone software for Arabic. It is very slow since everything is totally new - but there are some features in the software that are beyond amazing! While I am still at the early vocabulary stage, there is a module I can load on my iPod touch that will listen and allow me to practice by ensuring that I speak correctly! So I can do this on the PC and iPod ... plus there is some audio stuff I can just listen to. When on the computer, they have some other modules that help practice, but I am nowhere near advanced enough for that yet. It is a great help for me and I hope to be functional within one year. The biggest challenge is writing in Arabic, which apparently is common among Saudis as well ... the language is difficult in many ways.

Work is starting to get interesting now that my role is defining ... more on that in a future post. Wednesday nights are the start of the weekend and tomorrow I hope to wake early enough to get the bus for Rashid Mall to go shopping!