New People

Where was I...Ok, within a day of getting here I was invited out for a coffee with on of the ladies groups down at a house called the gazebo which surprise surprise...has a gazebo in front of it...They all seemed pretty nice and relatively open to making new friends. One of the ladies down the road who is also new here, Tracie, offered to pick me up in her golf buggie. (Everyone here rides these things) and since that moment we've formed a pretty cruizy friendship, both being new and all. She's a Kiwi Aussie whose husband Carl works as a Company Man out on the rigs. He's just come off of being a driller in Nigeria for five years having left because he couldn't stomach the corruption et al in the country. Some of the stories you hear are just abominable...mostly to do with pushing dead bodies off roads. Needless to say they seem pretty happy to be here if not somewhat bewildered. (More about the work environment here later.)

There are an assortment of nationalities in Ras Tanura from what I can gather. So far I've met a number of Canadians. A smattering of South Africans, an Ethiopian lady and a lot of Saudis. Oh and the Americans... I'm told there are quite a few English people floating around too but they've all buggered off for the holidays, as have the Americans. (This is the hottest time of the year here with temperatures at around 40 plus degrees with 80 to 100 percent humidity.

So there's this I'd say 60 year old Aussie lady here named Dianne who’s an absolute social powerhouse. If it wasn't for her and Tracie I wouldn't know a bloody thing. You don't get told anything here, you just have to learn it off other people. Its like an initiation of sorts where no one tells you you have to fill out form x to stay in the country, they just expect you to magically know. It drives a lot of people seriously barmy. I've been witness to quite a few white knuckle moments in the past week but so far its been ok for us other than Anthony being told all the wrong things about getting my visa sorted but that seems about normal. Inshallah it will work itself out.

So far everyone I've met has been pretty friendly. I'm told in Dharhan, people are a lot more clicky but that makes sense. There's only about 2000 ppl here all up and about 10000 in Dharhan. We got to go up there Wednesday night (equivalent of Friday night at home) and have dinner with one of Anthony's Canadian colleagues Denis and his wife Sharon (I think that’s the right name...tooo many names). Denis was lovely and took up shopping to fit out our house and proceeded to give us a large amount of stuff out of his garage too. He's a really generous easy to like Canadian guy but there's a crafty bugger under there somewhere I suspect because I think he managed to sell us a TV, amp, and speakers that he had been wanting to get rid of for a while. But either way it was a nice gesture. Dinner was great, he showed us around a bit of Khobar and we got take out to eat at home with his wife who'd been layed up with foot surgery. It was a really nice, if not jet lagged evening. He ended up driving us home because we couldn't get a taxi in which event we got really lost (roadworks...there's always roadworks) and had to ask for directions twice.

Interesting fact. If you are ever lost in a foreign country ask a pharmacist for directions. Apparently they all have to know how to speak English because that’s the language the textbooks come in.

I know I'm leaving out a ton of interesting stuff...Like the bus that I went in on with broken air-conditioning and the mutinying workers going home who almost throttled the poor driver but after being here a bit this is all pretty run of the mill:)