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28 March 2009

[wtH] Driving In Riyadh

When you drive in KL, Msia, you bitch about the jams and nutcase drivers. You are constantly embroiled and it is amazing that people don't just errupt into a mass amok of road rage at the bottlenecks in Jln Ampang, Jln Sultan Ismail, Jln Tun Razak, SS2, LDP (heck everywhere lah with the crap infra we have these days)...

When you are in Bangkok, Thailand, you bitch about how much worse they are than Msian drivers. Personally I'd say 25% crazier.

When you are in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, you bitch in amazement at the flurry of bikes (well at least back in 2002) and the lack of any coherent organization of traffic. But somehow it works (imagine an ocean with schools of fish just twirling around but not smashing into each other*).
*not that often

When you are in China (all cities) ... hohoho .... you just don't get it as all sorts of vehicles go through red lights, go up into ramps and drive through the pedestrian areas. And if you are crossing a street, remember to pray as the green man just means you look out for traffic more vigorously as now you have to cross the street.

I thought I'd seen it all, but Riyadh traffic takes the cake and is the mother of all traffic craziness. There aren't major jams here. But when you drive, you drive in sheer terror of your life.

No bloody kidding. In just 5 days of driving, I have nearly got owned by a huge assed GMC 4 wheel drives twice, and I saw a guy nearly creamed by a car by just a few inches some weeks before.

Riyadh, as a desert is very spread out and you are forced to travel by car. Forget about walking there is no way that would work. You could try, but you'd probably die of dehydration before you reach the destination (well, if a Saudi car doesn't ram into you in the first place).


Being oil rich, there are many wide roads but the roads here don't have that well tarred gravel feel. In fact, the roads here are quite slippery maybe it is because of the composition of the roads or the sand that coats it permenantly.

And when you get onto the non-highway roads, they are usually wide too but they are riddled with ocassional holes, speed bumps that appear out of nowhere (you get into a mini flying "Dukes of Hazzard" moment). It is rare to find lanes defined by white stripes on the road, in the highways you may have cats eyes, and on the non-highway roads there are non.

As what you hear from people who have been in Saudi, cars are huge and damn cheap. Even after being here for 1 month and speaking to people about their cars (conversations eventually drift there or about work or about sand sports or shopping at Carrefour .... coz you don't have the luxury of talking about the latest movies in town - maybe it has to do with the fact there are no cinemas here).

Oh yeah back to the car prices - even after being here for a while, my jaw still drops when I hear that huge assed gas guzzling cars are sold at a dime. Eventually after the jaw bone goes numb, and when the jaw musces ache, I remember to nudge it back to position. And yes - Proton can go to hell.

When driving in Saudi, you have to practice 3 extremes of driving:
- Defensive driving 100%. It's like being a jet fighter in a dogfight where you have to angle 360 and move you head left and right nonstop to make sure no ghosts are trailing and no crazy missles are heading towards you.
- Faith. This usually happens at roundabouts where you just let go, and let your constant speed be the only constant, and let the Saudi drivers use that constant value to navigate around you. You have a moment of peace admist the danger. It's a bit like Star Wars 4 where Luke's letting The Force come to him before he unleashes the photon canons into the Death Star.
- Crazy Taxi. Tap into you inner Saudi driver, you know its in you, and drive like a maniac!!

What else can you do? It's like the desert folks one day woke up and found their camels were replaced by cars one day, and they just go around as if nothing changed. This translates to driving behavior such as:
- Making u turns everywhere, even when there are no roads, even when they are going against oncoming traffic (I've done that too - I'm becoming a Saudi driver)
- Driving into 1 single point of the road that houses about 6 converging different flows, and making a 70 degree (clockwise) turn then immediately making a 90 degree turn (anti clockwise)
- Skipping the roundabout by simply taking the car off the road, down into the desert sand, then going up a hump of sand, and cutting into the road and going across - instead of waiting for a while to go 12 o'clock at the roundabout
- Going to the roundabout, making a "to hell with incoming traffic" u turn to make a 360 degree turn, instead of going round the roundabout to make a 360 degree turn (think I'll be doing that someday to bring out the Saudi in me)
-More ... lots lots more

And unlike Msia where people beep and horn, then drive parallel to you to curse you, the people here take it as a given that everyone drives like a maniac. Everyone horns each other, steers wildly just in front of each other, cut into the lines and then cut off .. but its OK, coz it's not personal, it's simply cultural :)

27 March 2009

[Self] Keith v Bill-O

One of the things that are somewhat entertaining would be Countdown with Keith Olbermann which I get from video podcasts. I just don't get his obsession with Bill-O (Bill O'Reily).

And while Keith Olbermann (and Rachel Maddow) come from MSNBC which is all leftie programming;
I've access to Foxnews which is nothing but a newschannel for the right. So yeah Bill-O is a radical, but so is Keith Olbermann. And while both of their shows are entertaining, I wouldn't call either a news programme.

So my guess is that people choose the channels they already want to tune into based on their own biases and pre-suppositions.

Just like what I guess Msian media is like. The religious from the Northern states probably read Harakah religiously; the UMNOputera types read BH and Utusan and believe it; the middle professional urban types read The Star; the cinapeks read the Chinese papers; and the jaded and anti establishment types read Malaysiakini.


So in the end, the real issues and dialogue don't get thru, it just gets warped into the media it is reported in, in the kind of color that is churned out, and merely reinforces the existing bias.

One thing really weird about Fox I noticed though (after some weeks of channel surfing), I'm not sure what they have about blond white lady presenters - haven't really seen other ethnicities, nor brunnettes nor redheads.

10 March 2009

[Self] Sandstormy Day

Sandstorm struck late this morning just before lunchtime. 2 pics and some fella managed to catch it on video as a cloud swept in..... cool the whole atmosphere was filled with a brim dark orange hue, dusty like heck and visibility severely impaired ...













07 March 2009

[Self] Saudi Notes 2

Phototaking is still a haphazard, touch-n-explode thing here. But I've encountered some locals in a less contraversial place ie: restaurants in the "singles section".

Every time before I even dare take a snapshot, I gesture with the camera and hands to show "kuh-lick", and ask for permission at least twice, very loudy and slowly in English (although I am sure that the places with Saudis only [no Indian or Filipina workers] don't even understand the language at all).
Pic: Me a colleague Amr (system architect from Egypt) at a madly expensive Jap/French/Arab restaurant at Tahlia Street in downtown Riyadh. Whereby the food was cooked by a Filipino dude. Quite teruk jugak the taste but oh well ...


Pic: Thank goodness for Starbucks' existance in the great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The local barista here was cool and really took pains to make sure I understood how to use the french-press and how to time the coffee making. But I did walk away dissapointed that the SB here does not sell KSA mugs, they had Lebanon, Kuwait, and Oman mugs but no KSA mugs!!! :(


Also, today I had camel meat for the first time ever. Camel meat's texture is essentially like beef, but tastes bland without the 'beefly' smell and taste. I don't think I'd ever eat it again; but I were ever presented a chance to do what Bear Sterns did with a camel carcass to get some fluids, yes I would engage in that grossful act too....








Pic: Larry and me at the "dirty shop" which serves a wicked hummus. This is also where the kebabs are great.
Pic: Die!!! Camel !!!!
Now, a story for the 3 pics below:
After attending a pre-production test for 5 hours, I had lunch at around 1530hrs. Not used to the road back so I stopped at random at a restaurant run only by Saudis. I managed to order food by pointing and sign language. And went to the 'eat-in' section. Only to find out that you sit down and eat in. Well, cool experience I think. Until the meal comes and I need to eat it.
Eating like the Saudis on the floor is an acrobatic feat. You sit cross legged and have to stoop over and get the rice, then you have to use the upper body muscles to sit up again as the hand scooping the rice swings into a semi circular motion such that the fingers + palm + rice + food goes into the mouth.
The first pic shows me in the correct stance. But I was finding Stance 1A hard to balance so I tried at least 2 other stances (as far as I can remember). So I changed to Stance 2 whereby I had my legs straightened out perpendicular to the food but it was really weird.
Now, imagine a dumb Msian guy tilting North > East > SouthWest (for counterbalance); then tilting North > (whoa!) West > NorthEast like a crazy drunkard 不倒翁 , you get the idea of what I was doing..... And then I evolved into Stance 1B whereby I sat crossed legged and sat perpendicular to the food, it it kindof worked out for the rest of the meal.
After makaning, I ask a waiter to take a pic for me (hand gestures), then I invite him to take a pic with me, then he tells the other workers to take pics with me, and the manager and some other workers all cram into the small eating area to take pics with me. Fun, but getting weird by now.
And then the camera battery dies and the frenzy cools off. As I go out of the exit by the backdoor (prayer time so they close down), the waiters excitedly gesture back to me to come again next time :)

04 March 2009

[Self] Saudi Notes 1

Enjoy them brands I found and bought!

Finally!! I have more permanent way to get Internet access, so here's a quick and dirty dump of some Saudi brands I managed to find.

Yeap, I know it ain't cool coz there's nothing about the society and weird pics of me doing weird stuff, but I've found myself in a place where taking pictures of a coffee stand is illegal, and it is mystical in the strangest conservative way ....

So rather than get myself onto Chop Chop Square less than 2 weeks being here, gotta be safe .... for now ;)


Pic: Pepper and spices ... origins of trade routes and wars.















Pic: Tea, pretty much also tied to Brits and colonialism.
Note: Now that I look back I realize I got spices and tea in my first trip to Carrefour, gosh how the ppl from ancient civilization must have yearned for it.














Pic: Aquafina Water (Pepsi Brand). Needed a lot of that when I first came over. Could not get use to the climate.


















Pic: Yes, I have to get over my manly high horse, and admit that I have to use face cream and lotion. Coming from a humid place, you don't know what is a "DRY" climate until you've breathed the air and felt you skin slowly crackle dry. Unlike previous visits to dry places, I am not dropping in for a bit but rather staying for several weeks/months. Come to think of it, maybe I need some extra moisturizer and some facial scrub thinggy too. Would a night mask make sense? :D

Pic: 2 of 3 mobile operators here. My client is STC while the others are Mobily and Zain.










Pic: Mee Goreng!! :) And the nice kind, not the crap from home which is getting worse and worse with its smaller dimensions and pathetic douses of bumbu and chilli :(













Pic: Plenty of ermm ... virgins here .... BAD JOKE I cannot help it :P