The Imam just started chanting for midday prayer. So I thought while I have spare time I’ll write a bit about my experience and impression of Saudi Arabia, and the capital city Riyadh.
First a bit of background. I’m a programmer, mostly doing workflows. My company sells project management software, and we are creating a project management office for a division in the Saudi science division. I’ve been here for a month now, with another month to go.
Islam is the only religion here. It’s against the law to worship anything else in public. When I got here at first, I was quite surprised to see that you have to insert your religion on a card you have to fill in when entering the country. I just left mine blank, I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I wrote the truth.
I have had no experience of what the domestic situation is for the women. Non muslim women must wear at least a abaya, basically a almost sheer piece of black cloth, with some non-descript decoration on the hems, but don’t need to cover their head. Almost all of the Saudi women I have seen wear the full outfit, with nothing visible but the eyes. It is quite bizarre and disconcerting. There are no women working in any of the shops, not even the ladies clothing shops. And then there’s “my wife is still in school, because she’s 14…”
Thus far I haven’t discovered anything to go do, except walk around in shopping malls… When you drive around in the city center, there are young men driving motorcycles, cruising the streets, doing wheelies. I’m told there’s not much else to do for them, they can’t go out and socialize like we do. And then every hour and a half in the evening, it’s prayer time, and all the shops close.
Of course, you feel pretty safe walking around in the streets, which can be attributed to the draconian measures if you’re caught. Strangely though, most of the houses have burglar bars on the windows. Might be for something else, but I thought that was weird.
For a place that’s in the middle of the desert, they’re pretty free with their water. The 5km from the airport to the city is lined with trees, each tree with a little pipe feeding it water. They get most of the water from underground aquifers, and something like 30% desalinated water from the sea.
The traffic. Just about everyone drives like the taxi drivers in South Africa. I’m actually amazed I haven’t seen more accidents than the 2 or 3 I have. They will just drift over lanes, right in front of you, or reverse out from a parking space, with little regard if a car is on the way. Yesterday, when I hooted at one guy drifting just in front of me, he decided to just drive off the road. I eventually decided to fuck it, and got away from him as fast as I could, driving in the opposite direction than I intended, because he wouldn’t allow me to turn.
For all that, the people are friendly. Mostly they will try to help you, although the language barrier can be a big obstacle. You just try and find someone who has semblance of English that can help you.
Excuse the rambling post, I’m not the best writer
