My day-to-day

OK, so what is what around here now that I am back inside Saudi Arabia. I have been taking walks around the compound as our weather is absolutely fantastic this time of year.

One day I saw about 30 Filipino workers cleaning up the desert. They had their hand tools and were out there squatting down cutting away scrub bushes and a huge pile of these shrubs formed a WALL, that was being picked up by the garbage truck. As this was going on, I noticed on the other side of the road, our housing appeared like an ugly U.S. ghetto. Very ugly chunks of concrete missing from the walls of homes with the re-barb showing and new painting desperately needed everywhere. Yet, the desert was getting cleaned up and not a hand was working on our housing situation.

My most recent walk around here again showed 20 Filipino workers or more busy clipping back the tops of all the trees in our area. This is a massive job and the trees look absolutely butchered when it is done. Fortunately, these trees all grow back pretty quickly. However, this choppoing of trees tended to expose even more of our housing and the horrible state of deterioration taking place. If 20 Filipinos were given some concrete mix and paint, they could have our whole area looking about 100% better in a very few days! Nothing is being done in this area, and I just turned my Walkman up louder and tried to, really tried to not notice the strange priorities of maintenance going on here.

As I rounded a corner and looked over at a part where some new housing is being built, I could see huge machines digging out a major part of the desert. I understand a pond/fountain is going to be constructed in that area.

Lots of new building going on everywhere not only at the university, but in Al Khobar as well, but maintaining what is already built is simply not something the Saudis seem to have grasped yet. And nowhere is this showing up more than in our housing area. How everything looks from the outside is very important in case Royalty floats by. Royalty never makes it this far down inside the KFUPM compound. Housing up closer to the campus, where things are exposed to Royalty, has been repainted and refurbished. I am reminded of Alice and Wonderland where the 'cards' are out painting the roses red!

We have an American in the apartment above ours that loves to garden, and in spite of our building falling apart on the outside, he has created a beautiful garden area out front that those in our area really enjoy and he has plans on spreading it even farther beyond our front doors. I have my potted plants out front that perks up the place, but yesterday, I had to remove a foot long chunk of concrete that fell off the side of the parking garage that is right by my plants. Hello re-barb!

I had the plumbers come the other day to fix something. One of them had to use my phone to call his manager. The plumbers are also Filipinos. They speak just enough English to get the job done and this one, when he was on the phone, noticed the Catholic Rosary I have draped around my desk lamp. His face just lit up and he gave a huge smile to me and made the sign-of-the-cross and asked, "Christian?" They get pretty excited when they cross paths with another Christians out here. Reminds me of when the Volkswagens first came out in the '60's and we always honked at each other when we saw another one on the road anywhere in the USA! Remember, we really have to keep our religious practices deeply hidden in this country. They like Christians here, but....we can not practice or show any signs of our faith publicly.