Sunday, November 27, 2005
En route Dammam – Shaybah
Hazy, high 20s C
I’m sitting aboard a DeHaviland Dash 8-200 somewhere between Qatar and a spot in the massive sand dunes of the Empty Quarter. I never did get that much sleep last night (at 4:30 I was ironing – ironing!), so tonight I believe that I shall try the medication-assisted method of getting a decent night’s sleep. I’m running out of options, as it’s turning me into a complete and utter zombie.
Anyway, enough whining. Let me tell you about Pleasantville, which is the nickname we’ve acquired for the Dallah camp in Dhahran (alternate nicknames include Scottsdale, Phoenix, The Valley, etc.). The Aramco compound is lovely – it has two golf courses, a library, museum, heritage center, community dining hall. There’s a fitness and recreation center, a grocery store, free lawn care, and everything is so perfect and manicured that it’s a little frightening. The thing is, when we left the compound this morning, it doesn’t look like the rest of Saudi Arabia. It’s so isolated and everything functions a little too perfectly, if you know what I mean.
So, my patience is finally wearing thin with one of our group members. He’s a sweet enough man, but he’s a bit too enthusiastic and has a wee bit of an exaggerated notion of his place in the universe at large. He’s from a town in the Midwest – for the sake of the story, we’ll refer to it by the pseudonym of Cheboygan. Cheboygan is a nice enough town to live, but it isn’t the center of the universe (to the rest of us at least). Everyone we have met now knows that he’s from Cheboygan. No one else in the group feels the need to go into such minute detail when introducing themselves. One of the indications that things were going to be a little weird with this particular individual came when we were getting ready to take off from New York, and he stood up while the plane was taxiing to let everyone know that Cheboygan was, inexplicably, one of the towns on the map they show all the time on those flights that let you know where you are.
We visited a lovely private school in Dhahran this morning. And it was a lovely school – there were Saudi kids in 3rd grade who speak better English than I do. We had a meeting with the headmaster, who was telling us about the challenges of education and the major curriculum reform efforts that are taking place in the Kingdom. Instead of letting someone in the group who has some experience in dealing with education (there were 3 of us in this particular sub group) make comments or speak, this gentleman – a businessman – went on at length, and frankly, I think he was making shit up on the spot. Oh, it sounded good … I suppose … but it became a repeated pattern throughout the morning. During our tour of King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, he kept cutting in front of everyone while we were listening to presentations from the various faculty and researchers. He’s short, but he was cutting in front of people who were shorter so that he could be in the front row (and thus make comments before anyone else). I’m not alone in the annoyance factor, either. People have been making aside comments like “Gee, I wonder if they have camels like those in Cheboygan,” or “Not the same as Cheboygan, huh?” Probably not the most constructive way to deal with things, but I’ve decided to give up acting like an adult for Lent.
At any rate. The Fasten Seat Belts sign just came on, and I should put this up. We’re seeing the sun set over the dunes tonight in the Empty Quarter (and it IS empty – there’s a whole lot of nothing down there!). More later, but hopefully not at 2 am again.
