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| The Sabic building. Your not supposed to take pictures... shhh! |
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| The view from the window in the office. |
Jared recently traveled to KSA for work. He was there for 4 days. He left Sunday morning at 7:30am for Amsterdam for a 6 hour flight. When he arrived in KSA he had to go through customs. This was an interesting affair. He was told it could take up to four hours to get through. As he walked through the airport he came to an area with 12 security booths. There were 4 booths open. Each line was designated for specific types of people. They had to choose the correct line to wait in and then wait... There was a line for women, white skin people, colored skin people, and Saudi citizens. As they waited, Jared saw a few people get to the front of the line for their turn, talk to the person at the desk, and then see them get ordered to the back of a different line. He also notice that some lines were moving faster than others. The womens line was barely moving, the Saudi's basically walked right through and his line was somewhere in the middle. It was faster than the colored skin line though. It took about 5 minutes per person and about 1 hr and a half for him to get all the way through. They also noticed that the four workers would often leave their booths for a chit-chat break, a coffee break or just to walk around, whenever they wanted. That didn't help make things go any faster.
Once through customs they found the taxi driver and started their journey to Jubail. To get into the hotel, they had to pull up to the security gate, have the car searched, walk through a medal detector and have their bags x-rayed. Only then were they able to check in and go to bed. It was a loooonnng day.
The next day he left for work expecting only what he'd been told, a whole lot of sand and a bunch of guys with machine guns. This was not so much the case. Jubail is located on the Persian Gulf and is actually quite green. There were lots of trees and pretty beaches. Getting to work he met lots of new people. Everyone was so nice and genuine.
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| The weird toilets. |
One interesting this about work was the bathrooms. Going into the bathroom for the first time he was told to check out the first stall but didn't know what to expect. When he looked he knew exactaly why. On the floor in the stall there was basically a hole in the ground. Peeing not so much a problem but I don't think you'd ever want to to try number 2 there. You'd have to squat over the whole and hope you don't miss. Also theres no toilet paper. Theres basically a hose to spray your butt cleans when your done. No Thanks!
Unlike most offices in Europe and the states, in Saudi when the work day is over at 4:00pm it's like a school bell rings and everyone drops what they are doing and leaves. He worked hard from the time he got to the office to the time he went back to the hotel. Then back at the hotel he worked ALL NIGHT LONG. The trip was successful and he looks forward to going back again soon.
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| You can park your car under the umbrella and watch the water. | |
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| A sand storm the last day he was there. |
Jared recently traveled to KSA for work. He was there for 4 days. He left Sunday morning at 7:30am for Amsterdam for a 6 hour flight. When he arrived in KSA he had to go through customs. This was an interesting affair. He was told it could take up to four hours to get through. As he walked through the airport he came to an area with 12 security booths. There were 4 booths open. Each line was designated for specific types of people. They had to choose the correct line to wait in and then wait... There was a line for women, white skin people, colored skin people, and Saudi citizens. As they waited, Jared saw a few people get to the front of the line for their turn, talk to the person at the desk, and then see them get ordered to the back of a different line. He also notice that some lines were moving faster than others. The womens line was barely moving, the Saudi's basically walked right through and his line was somewhere in the middle. It was faster than the colored skin line though. It took about 5 minutes per person and about 1 hr and a half for him to get all the way through. They also noticed that the four workers would often leave their booths for a chit-chat break, a coffee break or just to walk around, whenever they wanted. That didn't help make things go any faster. 
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