Freedom! Well, at least for a day...

Sorry for the late post but I am still reveling from our day trip to Bahrain last week. R finally had a day off (the first full day off since I arrived in the Kingdom) and we decided we needed to take full advantage of it. In the Kingdom, we relinquish control of our passports to R's company. They say it's a safety measure to keep track of our travel and movement but I also think it's a way to have everything in one place in the event of an emergency.  We had to request our passports and provide our travel plans a few days in advance but to be honest, I didn't really believe it was going to happen.

R has been on a brutal 7-day work week since we've arrived and every promised day off turned into a work day. It doesn't really bother me since I used to work a lot too and last-minute firedrills used to be my life. R put up with enough of my crap over the years so I am just grateful that we get to have dinner together everyday. 

Back to the story...since I didn't believe we were actually going anywhere, I didn't do any planning so as to not get my hopes up. I am a little crazy (okay, a lot crazy) about planning. TripAdvisor, Yelp, Lonely Planet, and of course, Google are my BEST friends (no offense to my actual best friends, I like people too).  I did no such planning for this day trip, much to my dismay but to R's excitement. R figured Bahrain is just an island that isn't even that big and there is only one bridge that leads to Saudi so it couldn't be that complicated.  We went with another couple and their child so we had, at the very least, strength in numbers even if we had no clue where we were going.

The process to cross the King Fahd causeway (really big bridge that connects Saudi and Bahrain) is a multi-step process. We figured we needed sustenance, so we stopped at an amazing little pastry shop that made fresh cheese-zatar pastries that were AMAZING. I wish I had taken a picture but we all inhaled them so quickly there was no time before they were gone. We got to the causeway, fully clad in my abaya, and went through several checkpoints. Our friends speak Arabic so I'm not really sure what each checkpoint was about since they handled that part. But we paid a toll, got our passports stamped, and had our car searched, and maybe another stop or two in between. When we finally saw the Bahraini flag it was like a weight had been lifted.

Not 10 seconds into Bahrain, my abaya was stuffed on the floor of the car.

It felt liberating to be sitting in a car wearing jeans and a tshirt. Someone described it to me as being released from jail. I couldn't have described it better.

We saw women driving. We went to the mall. We had lunch. We bought DVDs and magazines. We saw a movie. 

Okay yes, all these sound like normal things and they are normal but life in Saudi is abnormal. I take that back, it's not abnormal, it's just different (I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal). Life in Saudi makes you appreciate the little things about the rest of the world. 

The only sounds we hear at the mall in Saudi are the call to prayers. There's no Virgin megastore to test out video games, buy CDs and movies. Most entertainment products are not even allowed to be sold here (or they are heavily censored by the muttawa). The men are all dressed in thobes and most women are fully-veiled with voices that are never heard. Us expats (especially women) stand out like sore thumbs because we are walking around trying not to fall down in our abayas. (Side note, I met a lady who tripped over her abaya and broke her finger!)

Walking about the mall in Bahrain there was music, people were laughing, and people were free to express themselves. There was still an element of conservatism because you can still hear the call to prayer and there are women who are veiled or covered. But all the shops remain open and there is not enforced dress code like the sign I found from my previous post. Even the covered women were wearing abayas with a little more flair and character than we see in Saudi.

And usually I am not a fan of going to the movies since I think my home theater is better but when something is deprived from you, you crave it more.  This is when it really did feel like like I had been locked up for the past two months. I didn't know which movies were playing, I didn't know the latest hit songs. We looked like a group of lost puppies trying to pick a movie. We finally did and enjoyed the entertainment thoroughly.

I'm not even sure where the day went as I was slipping my abaya back on and heading back to Saudi. Back to our regular life on the compound. This one day of freedom was all we needed.

This must be what it's like to be a drug addict - we got our fix of freedom and now we're high on it. It makes the rules and regulations tolerable... well, at least until next time when we get our next hit. In the meantime, we are back in Saudi and its nuances.

One thing I still haven't gotten used to in Saudi is seeing men hold hands. I'm as socially liberal as they come, but living in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, I was shocked the first few times. I quickly learned that men holding hands is a sign of friendship and nothing more. You be the judge.

Cheers!
M

Hmm...

I came across this sign at the mall today. I'm not sure if I am more baffled by the content or the spelling.

Eastern or Western?

Disclaimer: There will be a lot of bathroom humor in this post. And by bathroom humor, I mean that literally. Read at your own risk.

Carrying around toilet paper in my purse nowadays is a lesson I had to unfortunately learn the hard way. (Read: the very hard way). My familiarity with non-Western toilets is minimal. The occasional camping trip led to some uncomfortable situations but all-in-all, my experience at public washrooms has been generally positive. Sure, on road trips, you would find the yucky, smelly, dirty washrooms but none of that experience could prepare me for what I would find in the Kingdom.

Prior to moving here, I had the privilege of watching this hysterical video on YouTube: How to use Eastern Latrine. Mostly humor, but oh so relevant.

Obviously, my experience is limited to using female washrooms here in the Kingdom but I am told that the male washrooms are quite similar in nature.  Public washrooms here are an experience, to say the least. Most public toilets consist of one crucial decision. You can take the Eastern style or Western style.



Eastern style




Western style

 As you can see, the Eastern style toilet can be used in a manner similar to the one presented on the YouTube video mentioned earlier. There is a hole and a hose. Easy enough to figure out I suppose.

The Western style toilet is where I am confused.  As ladies, we are accustomed to having toilet paper around. If you were to find yourself in a situation where there wasn't any, you could just switch stalls, no problem.  Here, that is not the case. We are provided with a toilet and a hose.  Let me set the scene as to what this is really like.

You are at the mall, shopping, eating, enjoying great company. You are wearing your clothes and an abaya and you feel the urge to use the restrooms. Upon entering, you have the two options, Eastern or Western, and you choose Western. You step into the stall which has a floor-to-ceiling door for obvious privacy. Unfortunately, as you get into the stall you realize there is an inch of standing dirty water and the entire stall from top to bottom is dripping wet. There is water, dirt, and hair everywhere. This is when you wonder what the hell happened in the stall before you got there. Was there something explosive happening? Why is there water EVERYWHERE?? Did someone wrestle with the hose while they were grooming themselves? The thoughts that run through your mind are disgusting. (and FYI, this is not an isolated incident, this happens every time, at every toilet, for everyone).

I don't mean to be crass, but then you do your business (which invariably leads to one of two possible outcomes).  Once completed, you would naturally reach over for some toilet paper. There is none. You are left with a hose (also known as a health faucet - thanks R). The hose sprays water which I suppose is what you are supposed to do to clean yourself. I'm not naive to the fact that water is probably a better method to clean oneself (bidets were invented for a reason).  But in a public washroom, I'm not sure what you are supposed to do.

I will leave it to your imagination as to what one should do in such a situation. You have a hose, your hands, and your clothes.

Any advice is much appreciated.

All I know is that my purse is fully-stocked, at all times, with toilet paper.

Cheers!
M

Cable, Internet, and Mobile phones

Perhaps if this were 1990 and not 2011, I wouldn't be so concerned with my wireless, cable, and internet providers. But this is 2011, and I care, very deeply. Honestly, when I lived state-side, I didn't have very nice things to say about my cable and internet providers. Complaints of service, products, forced bundles, and random rate hikes were universal and yet there was some monopoly over the service providers.  We can say the same about wireless providers - the AT&T monopoly over the iPhones until recently created a polarized society where you either put up with the phone you like or the coverage you like because having it all is too much to ask. Unfortunately, given our insatiable need for real time data regardless of cost, we would pay hundreds of dollars a month to these providers. Think about it - everyone needs the fastest modem, the high-definition television packages, and the unlimited data plans.

I'm not even trying to be critical because that was me (maybe it still is?). Before moving to the Kingdom, I carried around two blackberries and an iTouch. I needed one blackberry strictly for personal use - to manage two email accounts (one for my maiden name and one for my married one, even though I've only managed to change my last name on Facebook - but that counts, right?), keeping up with texts, phone calls, Facebook updates (with birthday reminders), and a recently created twitter account to follow random celebrities.  Then I had a blackberry for work, where everything was disabled except for sending and receiving emails and being "on-call". I needed the iTouch because when R was in the Kingdom and I wasn't, we needed Facetime to be able to communicate. I needed the ability to run into a coffee shop or anywhere that offered free wi-fi to talk to my hubby.  I sound like a crazy person, I know. But I'm sure it's not much different than any of you. The sound of something vibrating makes people dig around purses and pockets and it's almost a race to see who wins.

I wouldn't say I miss those days, but I do miss the ease and reliability of having everything I need in my purse full of gadgets. All that changed when I moved to the Kingdom. We were provided local phones for communication and safety. So now I am carrying around my sweet Nokia cell (picture below).  I feel like I've lept into a different era. Initially, I was terrified. How am I supposed to text on this thing? I guess Twitter and Facebook updates on the fly are out of the question.  There's no way I can watch the latest YouTube videos on this. How am I going to survive? 

The honest to goodness truth is that it feels amazing. With the access to real time data, there's an obligation to respond and have an opinion immediately. This goes for every e-mail (work or personal), text, etc. There's no obligation on this thing. Quite frankly, I couldn't type an email on this phone if I wanted to. I don't have that kind of patience. So while you are reading this on your blackberry, iPhone, iPad, etc, know that sending a text message for me is an arduous, time-consuming task.

Okay, so now you know the phone situation, let's move onto internet. As much as we hated paying hundreds of dollars for our own secure high-speed wireless network contained within the walls of our condo, it was necessary.  We certainly have no shortage of devices in our home - laptops, iTouch, iPad, Kindle, etc. This is normally not an issue - plenty of devices could connect to our network easily. This is NOT the case here. Anytime we want to add or subtract a device from our network, we have to shut down the entire network and all our devices. Reboot everything and the first three devices on are the ones lucky enough to connect. This is very frustrating. We never know at any given point what has internet - is it the iPad today, or the iTouch? Or is it the other iTouch because we took one into the car to plug into our cassette player? (Yes, our car has a cassette player - that's a whole other story). 

And last but not least, television. Those of you who know me, know that I am a little bit of a tv freak - both actual televisions and television shows (those of you who know my dad, know why). My first two years in Charlotte, I lived in a studio apartment no more than 400 square feet with nothing but a bed, couch, and 50 inch TV (if you think about those proportions, the tv is BIG). When we found out a few weeks before I was to leave that we would be allowed to ship some items, the first thing we shipped was our TV, surround sound system, and Blu-ray player (obvious necessities). What I couldn't ship with me, is high definition TV channels, more than 10 TV channels, a TV guide, and a DVR. While I am very thankful to have a big screen tv, I dearly miss the ability to know what is on every channel and the ability to record and watch it when I please! 

Here on the compound, our cable package is about 30 channels, half of which are in Arabic. I also have about 10 all sports channels (24-hour cricket anyone?). That leaves very few channels that are in English and that I would actually watch. Also, we never know which channels are going to be working at any given time - unannounced blackouts are common. The TVs in our bedroom and family room have completely different channel numbers.  It took some serious patience and on-line research but now I know when certain TV shows (in standard definition only) are on and at what time. But if there's a show I want to watch I have to plan my entire day around it (it's not like I put a reminder on my phone?). Ugh! Do you know how frustrating this is?

There are a lot of things I love about this country and this experience, but I don't think I will take cable, internet, and wireless for granted ever again!

Until next time,
M