The Saudi dresscode ...

Its the first thing that attracts attention : the way the Saudi people dress is far from our western style.
Okay, I admit : if I see the men walk around in that white cloth, and the women in the black ones, I start to wonder if it has something to do with their religion or more with the weather. Dumb, I know, so that's why I wanted to dig somewhat deeper and share it on here.

MEN's dress

The Saudi dress is made up of the following garments :

- a "thobe", also known as a "disdasha", is a long white robe. There are fashionstyles aswell, in particular the colors. You can see grey, brown and different shades of white.

- the "bisht", a ceremonial coat made of cotton or camel wool is worn in winter time, and is often embellished with gold or silver braiding. It covers the "thobe".

- on the head , the "ghutra" is held in place with the "aqal", a double twisted, thick, black cord. The "ghutra" may be white or red and white, its color doesn't hold no specific meaning.












- underneath it is a (mostly) white "taqiya", a small cap to help the "aqal" keep the "ghutra" in place so it will not slide of. It has probably also an hygienic purpose.

- Saudis wear sandals and hardly ever wear socks, although the western influence can be seen as a great deal of them wear normal-day-shoes.

-a range of accessories round up the national dress. There is the "masbaha", also known as "tasbi". It's a rosary used by Muslims while reciting the 99 names of Allah. Originally a religious item, it is also used nowadays as an accessory and a way to pass time.

It is common to see the Saudi man dressed in western-type clothes, but whenever there is an official happening, they will always wear the national dress.

Tomorrow I will talk about the women's dress.

Raining, raining, raining,...

Well, that about sums it up for the day : it has been raining all day. You can imagine how all the roads looked like, and of course, how the cars look like.
If you don't clean it this evening and tomorrow is a sunny day again, then all this mud will be hard like concrete. The only advantage is for the people who work here at the compound : they wash the car for a measly 20 SAR, so now they have extra income.

At work we had to wrestle some mud-roads to reach the substation where the fire-systems were flushed with air and had to be inspected. It all went smoothly.

Cullinairy info ...

I got this out of a book as I don't know all the names.

In Saudi Arabia you will find international cuisine with 'fast food' restaurants and American chains (McDonalds, KFC, Applebees, etc.) as well as Asian restaurants, particularly Indian, without forgetting the Syrian-Lebanese cuisine.

Traditionally, a Saudi breakfast is composed of dates (tamr), and large crackers soaked in olive oil (zaitun) and thyme-bread (zatar).

Syrian-Lebanese cuisine is very present in Saudi Arabia and many meals are made up of a series of 'mezze', assortments of hot and cold appetisers, together with grilled meats :

Hummus : chick pea puree with sesame and olive oil

Tabbuleh : parsley salad with chopped mint

Baba Ghanuj : aubergine puree with olive oil

Muttabal : aubergine puree with olive oil mixed with yoghurt

Kebbe : balls of meat and cracked wheat

Falafel : fried chick pea balls

Shawarma : grilled meat skewers

Shishtawuk : chicken skewers

Saudi food specialities are often made of rice, meat and grilled fish, spices and vegetables :

Kabsa : the most well known traditional Saudi dish, kabsa is made of spicy rice (coriander, cardamom, cumin,cloves, etc) on which you place pieces of meat (chicken or lamb). It is traditionally served on a large round plate, eaten on the ground with your (right) hand.

Mandi : another dish with Indian flavours, mandi, contains pieces of lamb cooked in the tandoor (terracotta oven), eaten with basmati rice and spices

Hammur biryani : Gulf grouper, served in all countries in the region, often grilled.

Um Ali : this Egyptian dessert is also called 'Arabic pudding'

Mhalabia : an orange flower flavoured custard tart, made with rice starch

Working when it's hot ...

We went onsite this morning for an inspection-round of the furnaces of units CDU/VDU. As we kind of expected when there were unusually few people around, the other party had "forgotten" the appointment. So after waiting for over an hour we returned to our offices where we got the famous "where are you ?"-phonecall 10 minutes later. We went back, being the nice guys that we are, and performed our check-up. Once you get near and inside those furnaces it is mighty impressive to see how big they realy are. Here are a few pics.

As we were talking about the weather and the coming humidity and warmth in the next months, I learned something new today : it seems the Saudis have 4 (or maybe 5 if zero is included) levels when working in this heat. I don't know the first ones, but a level 4 means they are only allowed to work for 15 minutes and are then obligated to rest and cool down for 45 minutes. And even then there are people fainting from exhaustion and dehydration.This info comes from someone who has worked in another refinery.

Preparation is half the work ...

It's day number 3 of "onsite" commissioning and we're starting to make some progress now.
The first day the markings were all messed up which made it very difficult to keep the paperwork updated. The second day it was better, but the maufacturors had used tape and all the glue stuck on the pipes and flanges. It was timeconsuming to get it all off and actually a waste of time.
The third day the neccessary utilities were not at hand. They hauld a big truck to provide water, but when all was ready to start, they found out the tank was empty. Then they lost track of the aircompressor and minutes passed ...
But as I said, there's progress ... and we got to give them some credit : it's new to many and everybody's got to learn, right ?

Too cold !

Just a short one this time : it is freezing cold out here. Temps dropped to 12 C and the wind put in a good fight with everybody today. Even palmtrees had a hard time ! Hope this will end soon.

YES !!!!!

I got it ! Finally ! I have my Iqama ! Yihaaaa !
It took them 8 weeks, one of the longest sofar for Total expats I've heard. Now I still need to apply for the re-entree visa, which will take another week if everything goes as planned. And tomorrow I'm going for the driving license aswell. Let's keep things going now they've started, right ?

Today I also received some pictures which clearify the way people drive around here in KSA. I know that most of you have seen them drifting, there's even a name for it : the Saudi Drift. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I suggest you type it in youtube and find out yourself. Be aware : some of you might be offended by some footage (ie. flying people, etc ...).

So, enough said, here's the pics ... Taken on the road to Jubail.

Pictures ...

As it is weekend again over here I can't keep telling you guys I've been running, exercising and sunbathing again, now can I ? Would become a bit boring and also it wouldn't be nice towards those stuck in cold and rainy Belgium, would it ?
So this time I will put a few pictures of the work in progress on-site. For obvious reasons I will not say where or what the pictures represent. I will leave that to your imagination.

39ํC or 102 F today

We have reached 39 Celsius today ! Pretty hot since temperature went up by 10 degrees compaired to yesterday. And if the predictions are somewhat trustworthy, the temperature will fall back to 19 next week.
I guess it will go up and down like this for another couple of weeks before the real rise to the 50's will start. As I said before, the dust is getting worse aswell.

More training sessions ahead ...

We just received an email asking us to attend some training sessions which will allow us to walk around the whole site in the future. The policy here is so, that when you want to go up, even if it is only 1 meter, you need to wear a harnas. All scaffolding is prohibited aslong as you did not have the training for "confined spaces and working on heights".
Another trainingsession is provided, also tomorrow, for entering a substation. And that is kinda weird how serious they take it here. I would understand if the substations are"live", but now a great deal of them are still just empty buildings full with sand and dust. On the other hand, maybe it's better to handle these rules strictly from the start-on so no mistakes can be made afterwards. I'd agree on that.
All of us are wondering what the turn-out will be like when things start operating. Rotating equipment, valves, instrumentlines, even the few fuseboxes I saw in the plant are covered with dust and sand. Commisioning will have a hard time for sure !

This week "spring" is in the air according to the local people here. This means temperatures will start to rise (today it went up in the 30's Celsius) and a period of sandstorms will start. Amazing how fast the weather changes in these parts. I'll make sure to keep my camera with me !

11 march 2011 ... a sad day for Japan

 It was one year ago that a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and a 130-foot tsunami ravaged Japan's eastern coasts, killing as many as 20,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Those natural disasters were then quickly followed by an unnatural one, when damage to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant sparked the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
I know this post is of-topic for this blog, but I want to pay my respect to the Japanese for their resilience and perseverance. A friend of mine had family and friends involved in the disaster. I wish them strenght and courage on this day.

Fellow countrymen in Jubail ...

Of course, I should have known ... Even in the smallest place on earth, there's always some-one you can hear saying : "Nou, dat lijkt me wel leuk, ja !". Those Dutch people are realy everywhere !
But now it seems that we Belgians are quite similar as prooves my blog here. In respons to one of my posts a certain Matias Maris from Belgium showed up. He is also living in Jubail with his family.
You see : the world isn't as big as it seems, is it ?
Matias is here with his wife Ellen and their 2 children. Ellen has also started a blog to tell about the adventures they come across while starting a new live here in Saoudi Arabia. It is very well written and a joy to follow, so I'll give you guys the link. I'm sure you'll get pulled into their adventures aswell as I did ! Enjoy woestijnmama !

On site ...

Finally we had the opportunity to go on site this afternoon, but boy, did we regret that ...
Nah, just kidding, but we were surprised about the size : we (me and Mark) parked the car at the training center and decided to walk through our units all the way down to the control-room, which is situated about halfway where we were. It was sunny and a little breeze invited us to "go where no man has gone before" :-) Avoiding the most dusty places, we did our tour passing the major equipment while repeatedly saying "Ni How" to the chinese constructors. By the way : "Ni How" means "hello". Everybody seemed sincerely friendly, although some of them looked "shocked" seeing 2 white faces amoung all those brown ones.
When we looked at our watch, time had flown faster then expected, so we went back to the car. It took us 27 minutes and we hadn't been strolling, so this again shows how big this refinery actually is.

Also today 8 of us are driving over 400 kilometer through the dessert to the Belgian Embassy in Riyadh. There's supposed to be a sports-event, but they are all expected in casual-chique. I guess the
reception afterwards was more tempting. Tomorrow at noon they are all expected back at work.

Yesterday at the weekly volleybal meeting another collegue showed up : a french guy from the refinery of Dunkerque. Number 167 of the Total expats and according to his explanation, the last one to be send to KSA. Too bad for those who were still hoping to get here aswell.

Fully licensed trainer !

The week is over.
For the past five days we've been trained to become a qualified trainer for our aprentices arriving in a couple of months. Today and yesterday each one of us had to come up with a topic and make a presentation about it.
Some of them were extremely boring, but others were a real joy to listen to. A bit of a disappointment was the fact that most of the people in the class were Indian and they didn't talk about their culture, but about work. The only arabian guy, who is also our supervisor, did so and talk about their do's and don't in his culture, which was very educating. Us Belgians, and the one french guy, tried to bring them up to date on our countries. The only issue now is getting the certificate they preomised us. They''ll probably forget it ...
We were allowed to end the day rather fast, so there was time to go home, get to the fitness and grab something to eat downtown Jubail. Me and Johan went to a thai restaurant.

Mayhem on the highway ...

Riyadh had a real bad sandstorm on saturday 25th of february. The whole town was covered in a darkening, suffocating cloud of sand and dust which lead to major accidents on the highway.
Luckily none of us were there, but we were able to get some pictures to show you guys how it looks.