A quick update

Last weekend was a lot of fun! I made it to Bahrain and has a nice bacon cheese burger and a couple of hard ciders for lunch at the Dilmun Club, which was a nice, quite break. After that, I made my back to Saudi Arabia since I finally received my membership card for the Half Moon Yacht Club (HMYC) and wanted to check it out and see the launching facilities. There, I met a couple of guys from France and one of them offered to take me out on his Hobie Cat! It was a blast going out there and having some fun seeing how fast we could get it going - we even flew the hull a couple of times! Unfortunately, our tacking was abyssmal so I know what I need to work on when my new boat arrives.

I also went to HMYC on Friday, which was really quiet for sailing and I guess I missed the caramaran fleet captain :-( The visit was worthwhile for me though - there was a dolphin cruising along the water there about 20m off the beach :-) Quite exciting!! I need to be sure to have a camera handy for next time one of the ocean creatures graces our bay!

Other than that, not a lot of excitement ... I may have found a second Hobie Cat that I can get immediately. This Thursday I will go to Jubail to check it out and see what it will cost to get it out of storage - they may be negotiable ... and I have a trailer lined up to move it if I can find someone with a truck to help me. That should not present a problem if the boat is good. If it is good, I hope to acquire on Thursday and bring to HMYC the same day and sail either Thursday or Friday (depending if it needs any new rigging).

The last little tidbit of news is that I agreed to buy a car today! Last night I checked it out and it ran well and the prices was right ... I will get the ownership transferred on Monday and have my own set of four wheels so no more rental car! It also means that I can sell my Honda Dio scooter, which served me so well until I got the rental car. So what did I get for a vehicle? Well it is a 1986 Suzuki Samurai:

My plan is to get a new vehicle, but probably not right away. The first step will be to find exactly what I want and order it. Right now I am considering the Toyota FJ Cruiser, but if I decide the Samurai is enough for me to go offroad then I may just buy a VW Golf GTI for the street and keep the Samurai for the desert :-)

What's new in Dhahran?

Being remiss in my blog has led to one very major oversight - something that is potentially life altering for me! Now what could be life altering for me (or more so than moving to a desert country located almost on the opposite side of the world from my origin) ... ?

Well, that comes in the form of something very near and dear to my heart: the sea. Dhahran is on the sea (the port itself is Dammam) and Aramco has a nice expanse on a place called Half Moon Bay. It is there my fondness for the sea can return in the form of something that will arrive here in late September or early October: my new Hobie Cat 16, which is a small catamaran!

This is the sail color pattern of my boat, which I intend to name after a creature I miss most dearly: Moxie. The boat is coming configured for racing, complete with a spinnaker for when I am in a truly adventurous mood!

The group at Half Moon Yacht Club (HMYC) is quite excited about a new boat coming it - it has been almost 15 years since a new Hobie made it to Dhahran from what I hear. There will be lots of opportunity to have fun out there - particularly with regular regattas. It sounds like a lot of the Hobie's out there are not getting enough use so I hope to rekindle interest in racing across the bay and see how fast a cat can really fly across the water ... In a couple of months I hope to blog about flying the hulls ...

So that is the quick update for now :-)

Qal'at al-Bahrain

It seems I have been more remiss than I thought with my blogging and have not yet added anything about my short excursion into Qal'at al-Bahrain, also known as Fort Bahrain. On July 14, 2011 I make the trip with a person I met on Couch Surfing. Our day started at Ric's (my favorite breakfast place in Bahrain) for some bacon an eggs. After that we made a trip to City Center Mall where I got a terrific GPS (Garmin nuvi 3780T with maps of the entire Middle East). We then decided to check out Bahrain Fort. So I will show a few pictures with some descriptions ...

Bahrain Fort is a remnant of the Dilmuns, early traders who preceded the Roman Empire and traded with many cultures. They had an interesting culture and a lot of trade with other empires; despite their small size, they were quite influential, although they also experienced a few catastrophic defeats.

A date palm above my rental car. Note the size of the dates!

This is the beach area in front of the fort area

A view of the fort from the sea area .. not terribly impressive

... until you see the scale of the walls

And the "moat" area

Arrow slits (there are also murder holes above some passages)

The right wall had openings to dump burning oil

This is the ONLY entrance

which takes you to a cool corridor

Some of the rooms were nice a cool 

My friend Eduardo for some size perspective

One of the cool rooms - a weapon storage

And the Bahrain flat and a view of Manama

A Brief Update (and some photos)

For those who have been curious, I've managed some pictures. They are all from my cell phone camera so their photogenic qualities are not ideal ;-)


I guess it is best to have a reason for the pictures, so I will start with some treats from work. The other day our supervisor brought in some fresh dates and figs from his property in Al Hasa (this is apparently the greatest oasis in the Kingdom). These were yellow dates, red figs, and green fig; apparently the green figs are very rare and difficult to find. These were all really good - the dates are like candy they are so sweet. The figs are more substantial and red ones are fairly large. I don't know how to really describe the taste, other than yummy! Dates grow on date palms

A date palm by the office with several clusters of yellow dates.

These dates grow all around the Dhahran Compound and some trees are really prolific!

The only other decent picture so far is from last weekend while I was driving on the Bahrain Causeway from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. This is driving over the Arabian Gulf. 

Bahrain causeway

Bahrain!

Last weekend I finally got to escape the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, if only for one day. It was quite a nice change of pace :-) The days events were full of little things and explorations ... and I was given some great tips from some fellow expats on where to go. The first stop was breakfast for some bacon and eggs at Ric's Kountry Kitchen in Jafair, which is just south of Manama. It was a nice little stop with some great  service, decent coffee, and yummy bacon - something I cannot get in Saudi Arabia due to the ban on all port products. The next stop was the City Center Mall, the newest one in Kingdom of Bahrain. It was a nice place where people were far more westernized, although I did hear the call to prayer while I was in the mall. It had plenty of high fashion stores and gave a great opportunity to look at some options for furnishing my cave in Dhahran at some later date - I now call my home a cave since it has virtually no natural light. Anyway, this was all possible thanks to having the car - a nice little Mazda 3 that I rented from Hertz and eventually got the paperwork necessary to travel ... but I am now ahead of myself! I neglected the joys of driving to Bahrain ...

Driving in Saudi Arabia is an experience that many should avoid; you may think you have seen bad drivers, but you have seen nothing! You can be driving along the roads at 100 km/h, which is the speed limit, then have someone pass you like you were standing still - even if they have to use a shoulder to pass. These are crazy drivers, apparently with the highest per capita deaths from traffic accidents!

Now the trip to Bahrain is around 50 km from Dhahran, most of which is at highways speeds. Leaving early has some advantages, particularly since the stores are close to western hours. The last part of the trip is a 26km causeway from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, which is an island. In the middle of this causeway is an island which has customs and immigration for both countries ... the causeway is like this:

1. At the beginning, you stop and pay a toll of 20 Saudi Royals (around US$6) the continue to immigration (12 km down the road)
2. Saudi Arabia customs check. They verify your car can leave the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
3. Saudi Arabia immigration check. They check if you can leave the kingdom then stamp your passport if you can. This is also where the verify and/or validate your exit/entry visa.
4. Saudi customs checkpoint. This is where they check your car to make sure you are not taking anything unauthorized out of the country.
5. Bahrain customs check. This is checks documents to make sure you have a properly licensed vehicle and such.
6. Bahrain immigration check. Here there check your immigration status and any authorizations.
7. Bahrain vehicle check. Here they make sure you are not bringing in anything unwanted.
8. Bahrain insurance check. This is where you buy auto insurance for Bahrain (unless you already have it) at a price of 20 Saudi Riyals per 3 days.

After those steps, you get to travel the rest of the way to Bahrain - it will generally at least 30 minutes but can take upwards of three hours in heavy traffic! You also get the same experience on the return trip, only reversed.

So after all that, I finally made it to Bahrain, ate well, went shopping then wandered the Manama Central Market area for a few hours, then drove back to Saudi Arabia.

It was a good first visit - the architecture was absolutely stunning and very modern! I will get pictures on my next visit :-)

First explorations ...

I finally have a car and it is a wonderful experience! It is a nice little Mazda 3, although when I picked it up at King Fahd International Airport it was nearly empty - and I was not sure it I would make it a gas station ... the first place I stopped at was out of gasoline, the second one stopped filling because it was close to prayer time ... so I drove on for a while into Dammam (an interesting experience I will get back to) and found a station later, but no lights were ... it was still prayer time. So I waited at the pump and finally prayer time ended I the tank was filled from near empty with 95 Octane (Premium) gas for a grand total of 28 Saudi Arabia Riyals (SAR), which is a little more than US$7 ...the price per gallon here (for premium) is approximately US$0.60 (or around CDN$0.165 per Liter for my Canadian friends). That was a nice little experience ...

Prayer time in Saudi Arabia occurs 5 times per day and changes slightly daily according to lunar phases; everything here is based on the lunar calendar so it takes some getting used to, but thanks to modern science this can be known well in advanced with very high accuracy! What makes this interesting is shopping times are generally 9am to 11am (except Friday) and 4pm to 12 midnight daily; the catch is prayer time around 6:30pm and again around 8pm - each for about thirty minutes. During this time all stores have difference policies: some may ask you to leave, others lock you in, and others simply let you wander in and out - but in all cases there are NO services. This means you wait until after prayer time to pay or get any kind of help. There is no deviation from this anywhere in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Back to the car ... the driver who took me to the airport was a fellow named Abu, who was recommended by Arun (someone I met in the same orientation as me - he is from Houston too but with his family). Abu normally works for someone else as a private driver, but has camp access and is free to drive for others when not working for his sponsor. He is the best driver I have had yet (i.e. I was not clutching the seat in fear of his driving - only for the other crazies on the road and our definition of crazies was identical). This got me to the airport where the Hertz agent was really helpful and got me the upgrade to the Mazda 3 (which is an automatic transmission which has some advantages when you are unfamiliar with an area). Speed limits here outside of Dhahran are posted in Arabic, which means I need to be able to read Arabic numbers (which I now can) but most direction signs are both Arabic and English (nearly essential). So due to the low gas, it seemed wiser to go through Dammam because I could not remember how far it was to a gas station on the highway ... so I took a scenic route through all of the construction and traffic - only one true near miss where someone turned on to the main road without stopping at the stop sign then veered into the adjacent lane while another car was on the left side of me at very high speed - good driver training (Smith System) had me looking far enough ahead to plan and see this so it was simply slow down (actually, slam on the brakes - nobody behind me) and honk ... then just continue on. You simply honk at people (politely - not an extended blare ... more of a "hey, get with the program") and you NEVER openly look like you are cursing someone or use hand signals (other than waving someone in). Drivers here are crazy but very predictable ... the scary part is the trucks .... think driving in a 100 km/h or 120 km/h zone with most cars traveling that speed and few crazies considerably faster, then the large trucks on the same road moving at speeds from 40 km/h to no more than about 80 km/h in rather high density (imaging entering and exiting). That is driving in Saudi Arabia. Just be alert and at all costs avoid driving on Friday night (avoid shopping too - that is the big shopping social night which is a substitute for entertainment here).

Now with the car; I had it for one day buy drove the moped (my 125cc Honda Dio) to work the next day because I needed to meet with payroll - and car parking there is an exercise in total futility unless you are driving an Aramco vehicle (I'm not authorized yet) but if you drive a moped or motorcycle, you can park where the bicycles are (i.e. right at the entry gate) without wasting time searching for parking. Very handy! But that morning I read the rental contract and realized I could not drive it to Bahrain ... so a few phone calls later (the only helpful guy was the one at the airport who rented me the car) it seemed best to go back to the airport so they could take copies of my driving licenses, Iqama and visa ... but it will take 2-3 business days to process. I tried talking to their head office in Khobar but it was not very productive. I even asked Ali, a co-worker from Lebanon who speaks Arabic, English and French ... his conclusion about the representative in Khobar was the same as mine - he even said the person not only was unable the speak English but there Arabic was just as bad! So yesterday I drove back to the airport and took care of these details ...

The drive to the airport was pleasant, right after work (actually after I helped Jesus, a new engineer in our group,recharge is mobily USB Internat modem - he does not have an Iqama yet which can be a problem doing this). The drive was nice - highway all the way and the only scary parts were the exits. Once I made the long stretch from the highway to King Fahd International Airport I was passing some sand dunes and in one area I saw a small group of camels (with no people) just wandering. It was quite a sight! The dunes are very beautiful! At the airport I saw the Aramco terminal, which is the hub for the Aramco fleet of jets and back to the airport ... which I am getting to know better now. It is a fabulous airport that I would send pictures of, but it is forbidden to take photographs of it ... such as same because throughout Saudi Arabia there is some incredible architecture which cannot be photographed.

So that is the present adventure. Settling in is happening ... today or tomorrow I will see if I can find transportation from the causeway into Bahrain so I can activate my visa ... plus I would like to see Bahrain.

Shopping Adventures!

Today was my first shopping adventure on the bus! To start with, I thought the bus I wanted left the ball park area at 8:30am so I hopped on my moped and made my way there - a nice 4km run and some fresh but hot (and sand filled) air. Found a great parking spot then asked the driver which bus, since none of them said Al Rashid Mall ... the reason was the Al Rashid Mall bus leaves at 9:00am ... so off to Najir Coffee House for a morning java ... and they don't open until 8:30 so I waited outside for 10 minutes (in the shade) and just enjoyed some quiet. The opened on time, but the espresso machine takes 15 minutes to warm up so I had a nice Turkish Coffee and read a local paper while I waited ... then the bus came and it ended up nearly full! Roads here are big crazy, particularly how to you get to places not being intuitive ... but we got there just as stores were opening ... The mall layout is rather confusing, even for a mall veteran like me (Edmonton, Alberta is lots of malls of various sizes) because the multiple levels were not all directly connected and it was just odd ... but I found my Bose speakers there (they have a Bose store) ... then walked the mall for a while ... and waited for the bus - the back to camp and a nap.

I decided that I needed to go to eXtra for some electronics stuff after my nap so I phoned Akter who called Makther (his brother) to come get me. This was good, except my door lock broke (in the locked position) as I left - I'd deal with that when I got back since I had no phone numbers with me (they were inside and my phone had lost half of my numbers for some reason recently). Anyway, riding with Makher is nice - a good ride to be in and he waits for me at the store ... except my timing was impeccably bad and as I was about to check out, the loudspeakers starting playing some strange sounds which mean it was prayer time and the store would close for about 20 minutes for prayer time. We stayed in the store, but there were no services or help ... so I continued to wander through eXtra. It was a successful trip ... I found a step-up transformer so I can by 220vac stuff here and have it work in the camp which is one 110vac (like America) plus a nice new monitor. Makther came in to find out if I was okay just as prayer time ended and I was paying ... then it as back to Dhahran camp.

We got back to camp but stopped at security so I could get a number for maintenance to unlock the door. I phoned and we drove to my place where Makther left me to wait for the carpenter (I am glad it was night and not daytime so it was cooler). The carpenter showed up after about 15 minutes, but I'd already managed to free the cylinder and unlock the door. This really makes me appreciate my locks in Houston that are key operated but can also operate electronically from a keypad, my computer, cell phone, or iPod touch ... basically impossible to get locked out! The carpenter took the lock apart and found a minor problem and fixed it so I hope this will be the last house incident!

So that was the day for me ... settling in and hoping that next week brings a multiple entry visa so I can go Bahrain next weekend, which is a long weekend, and a drivers license so I can get there easier - and go shopping easier in the future.