Are men forbidden to wear pants? Are non Muslims required to keep their heads covered? How do you (Paul) dress (i.e. western style or thobes-n-robes)?
Our dress code for the office in what we call 'native garb. The two Americans (I am authorized four) wear shirts ties (and yes, pants). My three Saudis wear thobe and guttrha.
(Under thobe are long white pants, under the pants boxer shorts. Trust me, I know.)
My one Sudanese wear a long thobe thing (in colors) and a small turban. He swears he going with Western clothes if my company picks him up.
The Filipinos wear polo shirts and (yes) pants.
My office tea boy is a Bangladeshi. He wears a green jump suit.
I wear a Panama hat to and from the car, but I am considered eccentric. Generally my head is uncovered.
The thobe and guttrha are the Saudi national uniform. Saudis cannot get service in government offices if they are in anything but military uniform of G&T.
:eek: I don’t think that I would like to visit a park-less place.
Well, we have a fine beach, but it is a couple thousand kilometers to the ocean.
Are there any performing arts? Theaters? Concerts? How about sporting events? Just what do Saudis do for fun?
During the call for prayer when everybody else lies prostrate, what are non-Muslims supposed to be doing? Just go inside and be out of sight?
Movie theaters, public musicy things, live theater, and most everything else is illegal here. We do have a football league, and the young people follow it closely. Saudi also seems to get into the Asia and World Cups pretty frequently.
When we have a football match, the try to get everyone to sit on one side of the huge stadium, to make it look like a crowd on TV.
When prayer call comes, I sit in my office and drink coffee. It is rude to be too loud during prayer time. It is just awkward as heck to walk between someone who is praying and the Holy City. It give you a weird feeling.
Are the Saudis doing anything ambitious with salinization? As I understand it, they’re so fucking rich thatn even with the 30,000 princes getting fat off the oil revenues, they still have been able to pump up the infrastructure there. But I see the place turning into just another pile of rocks in the desert after the oil runs out, if they don’t figure out how to desalinize (SP?) water cheaply enough to make massive irrigation on a scale that would dwarf the American west possible.
Would I be considered wise or naive for saying such things in Saudi Arabia? Or would they just stick me in jail?
Are you online from your home or office?
Are there internet restrictions? Are there some web sites you cannot look at such as porn or anything anti- Saudi?
Are things you write and websites you visit monitored in order to keep you from sending emails or posting to boards that might show Saudi in a bad light?
Anyone got any links to photos of “thobes”, “guttrha”, and other traditional Saudi garments? I imagine they’d look familiar enough, I just don’t know what terms go with what garments.
Do any Western women work in Saudi Arabia? Are they somewhat less restricted than Muslim women? What about non-working western women (spouses)?
How would an American (or other Western) Muslim find life there? I guess that’s a really broad question, but what I mean is would they find moving about the country easier? would they have an easier time getting approved for a job there?
Can Jewish people (or people with Jewish-sounding names) visit or work in Saudi? Would they feel endangered if they did?
Do you have access to satellite TV etc.? if, say, you wanted to watch recent movies on pay-per-view. Can you buy DVDs/videos there? If you visited the US and wanted to bring such things back with you, would you have any problems?
What about something like a bottle of liquor - could you bring such a thing back with you?
Does anyone ever go to Saudi Arabia as a tourist? or is it strictly as a foreign worker such as yourself (I’m excusing people making the hajj from the “tourist” definition of course, obviously they are there to visit rather than work).
Thanks for the link.
Slight hijack - I noticed that all the faces in the photos on that site were blurred (I think I’d heard of Islam not allowing portraits, though I forget why) - except one of King Faisal. Anyone know why his portrait is permitted?
Many questions!
Yes, Western women work here. Mostly as nurses (senior nurse, the juniors are Filipinas) some are teachers in private schools (the public schools tend to hire Egyptians).
I am at home now, using an illegal satellite internet hookup. The regular service has to go through a single censored server and so is quite slow. Once again, the Kingdom has a million rules against everything. Few of the rules are enforced.
Importation of alcohol, statues and any part of a pig are forbidden. Until a few years ago, the customs guys opened every single suitcase. A few years ago they started using x-rays. I interpret this as a sign they are no longer looking for dirty DVDs, but instead are concerned about guns.
We have pay-per-view here, but I have no idea how it works. They run adverts in the newspapers. We can buy some DVDs. (Oddly Aladdin from Disney is allowed. It seems fairly supernatural to me.)
Time to kiss the bird and make breakfast.
Desalinization is a big deal here. Huge plants here in Jeddah and over in Dhahran are run by some German company and produces acres of water which is piped to Riyadh.
Supposedly the stuff is more expensive than oil. Still, it is remarkable how much of the stuff is wasted. In fact, I often use the word ‘sinful.’
For example, no water recovered from air conditioners, not even for secondary use. (“Secondary use?”, you ask.) That is the use of semi-treated sewage water for agricultural purposes.
There is ‘city water’ in town, but a lot of water is delivered to homes, business and compounds in 20,000 liter tanker trucks.
That no water recovery is weird. Even here in water-rich Georgia (especially this month – the last two hurricanes’ remnants have already dumped over 13 inches of water on us, setting a record. They also brought in some tornados, so it’s not all good) we use recovered water for some purposes, like ag and watering golf courses. Mostly it’s to save on water treatment costs, since our pop. and various businesses are putting pressure on our water resources, plus we’re fighting with a couple of other states over who gets what share of the water that comes from various riverine systems in the area.
I was thinking that long-term the Saudis would be well advised to look into the development of desalinization tech that would change the ecology of the area, i.e., create artificial rivers, etc.
The notion that the water is more expensive than oil is also puzzling. As I understand it, desalinization is difficult because water and salt tend to bond together very nicely. But one of the major techniques is the electrodialysis method, which is energy-intensive, but I hear they have a lot of oil over there. All they have to do is set up a couple of plants, pump oil in and pump water out.
Actually, a quick read on Wikipedia informs me that Saudi Arabia accounts for 24% of total world desalination. Guess they’re already on it. I’d be pushing research and development hard with prizes, but I imagine it’s hard to encourage that sort of thing in a culture where family is everything.
Is it true that the oil, the source of their riches and importants, comes from enormous train-sized worms deep under the sand? And that the bedouins eyes glow a strange blue?
Do you miss Bacon?
As a fellow Timneh owner, I understand…but Kiss the bird sure sounds like a euphimism for something. 
I have given up pork for Lent. So far, I am doing pretty well sticking to it.
I have never met any sand worms, so I suppose it is possible.
Could you give some specifics on day to day economics? What are typical saleries? rent? house prices? food? etc.
Could you own a house if you wanted to, or is that reserved for Saudis?
How are jews treated?
What are the typical political views of people there on the west, on the US, on Eurpope, and on the war in Iraq?
Have you had any contact or deeper friencships with any of the royals? How broad is the chasm between royal and commoner? What’s the feeling of the common man about the royal family?
How much technology is about? You’ve mentioned that you have an ipod and Internet access via satellite. Are these typical for everybody? How much high tech development happens there?
How common are multiple wives? Is this typical only among the rich?
You mention that women hold various jobs. Do you work with any? You’ve mentioned that talking to Saudi women is difficult. Are you able to have any female friendships deep enough that you can get a sense on their perspective of their world?
:dubious: Did you hear this from Maud’Dib?
Which sounds just a little like an Arabic word.