Friday, September 07, 2007

Saudi Bogans and The Great Flood, oh and Serial Killer Coffee

If you go out and about in Saudi you’ll soon notice there’s a lot of young guys that like coming up to western women and talking to them (aka trying to chat them up) in English. They’d never do it to a Saudi girl so it’s essentially a major mark of disrespect. They’re the same sort of breed you get in Australia of the bogan variety who drive round yelling out the car window at you or who you’d find in a train station in Sydney asking “what are youse girls doing?” The best response is to ignore them…although some ladies don’t understand the Mickey’s being taken and they try and hold a conversation at which point they don’t understand why all of the guy’s friends are trying to drag him away…looking wildly around to see if there are any Matawa nearby. I’m currently perfecting the phrase “and you call yourself a Muslim?!” It works…although that doesn’t help if you’ve got a bunch of guys driving by in cars yelling out “I love you white lady” at top volume. I shall call this breed the international bogan.

Oh just a note on where we live. You would not believe the irrigation here. The sheer water wastage is the first thing that confronts you as an expat. Especially if you’ve come from a very water conservative country. Sprinklers are left on here all day. In 50 degrees Celsius. Grass is kept alive by essentially creating a rice paddy environment in your garden once a day. It’s really difficult to get used to and to assimilate to. If you turn the taps off, they get turned back on within minutes. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow and post them. Its completely mind boggling. There are a lot of complaints and attempts to get all water conservative. Even Aramco itself is trying to start up a water wise campaign in Dhahran…I don’t think its working yet…We’re trying to get a lot of water wise plants in the garden but I think its not going to make a difference to the guys who run the sprinkler system. I guess at least they’re not depleting underground aquifers to do all this. Its all from their desalination plants but they still have to run those and that costs more money than oil to produce…I really think it’s a pride thing.


Dhahran’s massive golf course is fully greened. Ras Tanura’s isn’t. The reason Dhahran’s is green is because an American official was given the tour around the camp a few years ago and criticised the golf course for being sandy. One of the largest greening projects on the East Coast was immediately put into place to green the course to save face after the guy left. The cost must have been phenomenal. Insane…just go have a look on Google Earth and you’ll see what I mean. Well that’s if it’s up to date to this year.

We had Turkish coffee by the beach this morning to the soundtrack from psycho…I think the coffee guy was in a really bad mood.

I also took Anthony out to see the horses at the hobby farm about five kms into the desert from camp. There are about three purebred Arabians by the looks of it, a number of crosses with thoroughbreds and a gorgeous grey purebred thoroughbred stallion. All very friendly until they realise that you don’t have a carrot…One of em tried my hair but apparently it didn’t like my shampoo. I will also get some photos of them for people. Preferably with them stomping on Anthony to create pictorial interest. The stables are all sand but are kept meticulously clean and the horses all look in good nick. They even get their own sprinkler system to walk under. (nuts!)

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes the Bogan species is very widespread. It is sad they cannot act like silly boofs to their own women. Keith.

2:35 pm  

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