[wtH] Skate & Drift, Habibi

My jaw dropped when I saw these 2 clips.

The skating thing - I still cannot phanthom it. Freakin Amazing!! The Saudi guys really put our Mat Rempits to shame. C'mon UMNO Youth do something to upgrade their skills! We can't lose out jatuh muka la... pls start some campaign like "1RempitUp"or something (include a song too pls).




For the drifting shit ... wow I really wanna go see it. But its all hush hush. So now just have to to hope one of the local dudes to give me a call when they know where the next crazy drifting races are gonna be held. Fast & Furious 5 probably can't be held in Saudi (F&F needs scantily clad babes as part of the success formula), but they should feature some Saudi character with outtatheworld drifting skills.

[Self] Pondering About Rain

Coming from Msia that rains quite frequently, I never really did think H2O falling out from the sky until reaching Riyadh.

In Msia, rain is relatively frequent and relatively heavy. A reinvigorated freshness hangs in the air especially after a heavy downpour. UNLESS its one of those light rains in a hot afternoon that only serves to release more heat into the air, resulting in a more humid effect, which results in a more stickier & smellier cram-like-hell epsiode on the LRT.

In Msia, rain is also the a great reminder that the Malaysian Smart Tunnel is actually dumb as hell (it closes down everytime there's rain resulting in a massive jam); rain is also the time when the LRT management people call up their PR reps to create writeups in anticipation of a LRT failure (especially the underground links).

Rain in countries blessed by 4 seasons, especially during winter (incl early spring + late autumn) are the nicest. I have particularly a great fondness for sniffing the crispiness that lingers in the air after a shower, and enjoy the simple pleasure of deep inhalations that have a nice chilly taste*.

*Although deeply inhaling in CQ thinking that the smog was actually mist and vapor was a major mistake.

But all those feelings are so much more distincitve in Riyadh. Rain is rare here, and for the times that it has rained, rain has actually a foul, putrid, smell. The best I can try to describe the smell of rain here is as below:
- Get a hairdryer and an old carpet (must be dirty, dusty lots).
- Select an area 1m x1m and blowdry it for a few hours. Take a sniff and remember that smell.
- Keep the area of the old carpet blowdried and hot, then quickly sprinkle a few drops of water (not pour, sprinkle).
- Now, in that split second where extreme dryness comes into contact water, you get this weird moment of smell where moisture is 'corrupted' by the smell of extreme dryness. Imagine via some CG effect of water droplets on a molecular level being enveloping by sand & dust from the atmospheric dryness ... and that poor molecule releases a vapour of protest in the form of that foul, putrid smell....

Pic: This is part of tree. There's so much sand that the rain washed it down and they settled in the leaves.










The only time this was different was last weekend where there was essential a storm Thursday night, followed by drizzles the entire Friday. For that weekend, yeah the air smelt great; but by Saturday it was gone. What remained were pools of stagnant water on roads, roadsides etc as there aren't really drains in Riyadh - mainly because you don't need drains in the middle of a dessert anyway.

Pics below: Stagnating pools of water that eventually took a few days to clear up (it's not blasting summer yet)

[Self] Hearts And Souls

Am working on a Saudi weekend, and watching via cable TV this really old show starring the young Robert Downy Jr that has 4 spirits with him that sing "Walk Like A Man".

I think I last saw this show with Wee Yan 17years ago on VHS video tape, and its still a pretty good show up to now. I think the show is called "Hearts And Souls".

[Work] Crazy Italians :)

Am working with a bunch of Italians, and there's some cool cultural gaps that can be sometimes funny.

For example: Italian curses sound really nice (make sure you put in the accent)
- Checazzo (Key-Kahz-Zo) !!
- Chepalle (Key-Pahl-Leh) !!
- Vafakuloh (Waa-Fah-Koo-Loh) !!

And a rather weird conversation happened in the project room earlier today, it was about the Italian team's dinner the night before, here goes:

Carlo: ....... Yes, the chicken there was better than MamaNoura's 1
Keen: Where is that?
Leandro: (Mentions same name I cannot remember)
Andrea: Yeso, that Leandro, he had a f*ck 2
Keen: (Turns around in surprise to Andrea) Huh? What?! And how do you know anyway that Leandro had a f*ck last night? 3
Andrea: It's just a f*ck .....

Now, let's put in some clarifications to make the reader understand and put things in perspective:
1 - MamaNoura is a nice restaurant in Riyadh. It serves the freshest and sweetest of made on demand juice; it also serves kebab, roasted chicken, humus, fresh bread etc. Everyone loves MamaNoura!
2 - F*ck as per Italian pronounciation wasn't the act of sexual intercourse. It was "fork". In Saudi, most restaurants provide plastic spoons and they don't use forks at all. I'm still puzzled about this one.
3 - Considering the total Male-Female segragation here, chances of an unmarried person doing anything with the opposite sex is like getting drenched by a thunderstorm in Riyadh. Plus I was thinking in my head ... did Andrea know about Leandro's "fork" coz he was the one jolly romping with Leandro?

Of course, when this was clarified further into the conversation, we all had a goodo laugho. What the fork indeed!