Journey to riyadh

Originally uploaded by ISLAMASAURUS

Asalamualaikum,

So i’ve found a temporary way of posting pictures. So heres my first few. It was the journey to Riyadh. What its like to be above the clouds, for those of you who’ve forgotten what it looks like up there.

So what happens when you actually get into Riyadh? Theres 3 stages.

1) You’re about half an hour away and the captain comes on, tells you about the weather, dress code(everybody wears abaya, a long garment) etc. Then you get a card, you put in your details, type of visa you’re coming in on etc and then you suddenly start thinking about the death penalty. They give you a card that says anybody bringing in drugs etc will be punished by DEATH! At that point you’re like oh man! Then you remember you dont have any drugs. Phew. But what if someone planted them on you?! Then you convince yourself “thats dumb” and ignore the card like you’ve never seen it, or try:p.

Journey to riyadh

Originally uploaded by ISLAMASAURUS

2) Your plane lands on the runway, you see many of the Saudi women throw on their niqaabs and abayas (face veils and abaya). Then you walk out into the HEAT. This of course depends on which month you come in. September is pretty hot. So you go through their customs area, police guys everywhere. You wait in line for a long long long time, if you’re lucky and the staff are actually doing their job you get through at a reasonable speed. But it wasnt my lucky day. Waiting, waiting……waiting. You look around and you see these guys who are beyond thin wearing super tight trousers, which cling to them (somehow), they check one passport, then go for a little walk, stand around laughing with other staff who are also in super tight trousers. “Hmm, strange place” you think to yourself. So you wait around some more unwillingly seeing the abomination to the eye(the trousers) and it goes on for a while, till finally you see a line where a guys doing his job and he didnt have the gross trousers! So you sneak over to the other line without the security seeing you and telling you off and away you go.

So you’re through and out on the streets. From here you either grab a cab or someone picks you up. If you do get a cab, be careful not to be ripped off. I was picked up on time, which was a little relieving. As you get onto the roads and the choatic highways of Riyadh you may start to feel a little anxious? A little more than anxious, maybe terrified, but that depends on where else in the world you’ve been. Driving in Saudi requires a whole post, so i wont digress into that right now. But lets say people drive a little too close here and pull a lot of dodgy turns, so for about 89% of your journey time on the road you may feel just a little uncomfortable.

Journey to riyadh

Originally uploaded by ISLAMASAURUS

3) From here you go to wherever it maybe that you need to go. As for me I had to go to a hotel that was organised for me which was pretty nice. So from here one sits in their room and thinks, am I really here? So to convince yourself you may go downstairs and walk around, try talk to a few people, I do that, I go out and talk to random people. However I quickly found nobody can speak english. So I walked around in the heat for a little while till it tired me out and retreated back to my room. From here I analysed my situation and mentally prepared myself for a year here. So that could be your first experience of Saudi, or not. But that was mine. But one things for sure, the probability of you experiencing part 1 and 2 is pretty high. But dont let that put you off:-)

Peace

Asalamualaikum Warahmatullahi

So it’s been a few days since my last post. Reason? I wanted to start posting pictures of my day, makes it more interesting, plus it gives a better idea of what Saudi really looks like. So I have a bunch of pictures but I can’t post them right now, which leads me to probably my first real post that may actually be of some use.

Introducing the system here isn’t too difficult. The most prominent feature of Saudi Internet is of course the censorship of websites that have sexually explicit content that violates the values of Islam. But of course it goes a tiny bit beyond this, well actually it goes way beyond this. Censorship actually goes beyond the central goal that Saudi states, it also blocks political and religious websites and a whole bunch of others that are harmless and could be anything from medical to historical. That’s censorship summed up, other features that stand out are the inconsistent browsing speed, the super slow upload speed, (they don’t have broadband here yet) and of course deceptive advertising.

Saudi has wealth, plenty of it, so why isn’t it providing a good service? In the end it comes down to how the country has been run for the past…since it was created? However things do seem to be changing with the economic reform strategies that Saudi is moving towards, the main one being Privatization. Privatization is basically when the transfer of property or control of assets, usually owned by the state is passed to the private sector. Privatization isn’t an easy move for an economy, which has been completely state-owned, as has been seen in the past. But how does all this link to Internet in Saudi Arabia?

If privatization is the movement of business from government to private sector, then we have to look at what exists in the market. Previously there was the ‘Saudi Telex, Mail and Telephone Ministry’ that organized all the services associated with Telecoms. Then Saudi Telecom (STC) emerged as a result of ‘privatization’, it was as good as being state-owned of course, STC was a complete Monopoly, i.e. the sole provider of Internet and land-line/mobile phone services. Being a monopoly STC could sit back and of course do what it shouldn’t, take advantage of the situation and provide a service that was far below what it’s capable of, giving consumers little choice, quality and of course overpriced products.

Fortunately, however STC’s days of kicking back and enjoying the ride seem to be moving towards an end. Not to long ago a new company set up in Saudi Arabia called Mobily, creating competition, something every healthy economy needs. Although STC is still the only provider of landlines and all non-wireless Internet, a level of competition at least now exists and there are a few new competitors trying to infiltrate the market. So it looks like there is hope for Saudi Internet after all.

Now with these changes and a hope for better Internet in the land of sand, what has Saudi Internet got to offer at the moment?

That’s pretty much it. I have the wireless, its convenient and I couldn’t wait 3 weeks to get the DSL installed, because it wouldn’t have been three weeks, more like 3 months. Anyway summing it all up, Saudi’s pretty behind, but things are changing and with the new companies setting up the prices should start to drop slowly with quality hopefully increasing, lets hope not the other way.

Back to work for now, good thing its wednesday:D Over here the weekend is Thursday and Friday.

Wasalamualaikum

Welcome to ISLAMASAURUS.com,

My first post. Heres some information for anybody who might read this.

· What is ISLAMASAURUS?

ISLAMASAURUS will be based around the day-to-day life of a foreigner in Saudi Arabia. I’ll be posting information of what I get up to, what its like to live in this country, what the native people of Saudi are like and general other junk about this place and my experiences and thoughts here. So hopefully there’ll be some interesting information at the end of this year spent in the land of sand. At the same time this may act as useful source of information about the country if you ever consider working there or just going there for some other reason. Hopefully I can get pictures up pretty soon to have some imagery so we know what Saudi actually looks like(getting a little snappy happy here).

· Whats the situation?

So heres some general information to get us going here at ISLAMASAURUS.com. So far I’ve been here since September 2007, its been a good 6 months now (wow, time flies), therefore I must say I’ve experienced quite a bit already with respect to Saudi life, people and the general culture that prevails here(most likely what I have posted will probably just come out in future posts).

· Who am I?

A little about myself. Im a Muslim born and brought up in the West, so its quite a change being here, climate, people, DRIVING, culture, bureaucracy, DRIVING, work life etc. However alhamdulillah(all praise to God) I seem to have adapted quite well to the difference.

I’ve come here to primarily learn Arabic and while im here I’ll see what this part of the Middle East is like to live in. The Arabic im learning is classical or traditional Arabic, also known as fusaha, not the slang that is mostly spoken in most parts of the Arab world.

That should do for now. See you tomorrow blog.

Wasalamualaikum Warahmatullahi