Duck, Run, Duck, Uh...somebody call me if this gets more out of hand ok?

8 Months

Well Kids here it is.  The last anniversary before I leave Saudi Arabia.  8 Months down and my contract expires in August while I'll be gone on vacation.  I'm set to head out near the end of the month and return in the beginning of September.

Wish I could be a little cheerier about this one, but I'm just not feeling it today.  I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that its the 11th of July and the majority of instructors including yours truly have not been paid.  No word has ever come from the bosses, not the executive level bosses nor the middle managers.  No excuses, no apologies, no explanations...nothing.  The last time this happened, I made it very clear that I work for money, not goodwill, although once the money's in the bank, please, by all means bring on the goodwill!  Guess I didn't make myself clear enough.

The good news is that I get on a plane bound for London in 19 days, from London I head over the Atlantic to Chicago and then on to St. Louis  I wish I had short timers syndrome, but I don't.  I'm just damn lonely.  I'm so happy to get out of the house and go to school its ridiculous.  I bought another Instructor lunch today just for the company (well that and he deserved it).  Summer here is ridiculously boring and lonely for expats.  Next year, I might very well take the 60 days and spend 30 of it in Mexico just to escape Saudi during the summer. 

Nothing very profound tonight sorry, poor old Uncle Bill is going to worry that I've contracted a case of the blues.  Nothing could be further from the truth, I've just got a case of the Saudi's.  In 19 days we'll see how my reintroduction to the land of freedom, trees, hills, rivers, women, beer and pork goes.  This trip paid really well (when I actually get paid).  But it's cost, while no fault of the Kingdom was still exponentially greater. 

**Update, Finally I got not one, but two of the bosses to call me back tonight!  They say that Regarding salary were looking at In'shallah Saturday, guess we'll see if my theory about In'shallah is accurate, for the sake of my bills and responsibilities, I hope not**

I want to come work in Saudi! III

Money:

Money in the Kingdom is a little "sketchy".  Unless you work for the Government or Aramco you'll be subject to the following problems.  These ARE NOT isolated events, and THEY WILL happen to you, so if this is where you want to come for work, be a good scout and "be prepared".

Part 1:  Problems

1. In'shallah:  In'shallah means "If Allah wills it".  Unfortunately when dealing with foreigners the phrase is often used to mean "Whenever", "If I feel like it", or just plain "its not gonna happen".  Most people arrive with a few extra bucks that they've saved in preparation.  It will barely be enough and pay is given here at the end of the month.  If you arrive mid month, you may very well wait until the end of the next month before collecting your pay.  It WILL be late.  When you ask about it, you will for sure be told "bukra-in'shallah"  This means "if Allah wills it, you'll get paid tomorrow".  In my experience and the experience of most of my friends, he doesn't will it.  
2. Laid back Culture:  This is not the West, there isn't usually much of a hurry here unless it involves driving.  If the money arrives at the accountants office 4 days late at 9:00 am, he'll disburse it around 1 or 2.  No hurry.  If your housing allowance is due August 1st, look for August 15th, if your lucky.  Expect to call the same person or same 3 people at least 5 times just to have someone reach into their desk and hand you a rubber-banded stack of cash with your name on it  that they'd had all along.  No hurry, no explanation.  
3. Lack of actual Accounting:  They owe you 15,000 SAR, they hand you 14,910.  Where did the 90 SAR go?  Usually you're so happy to get it you just accept it and take off running to the bank and don't even think about it.  Since I've been here I've been 90SAR'd to the tune of about 2000 SAR ($533 USD). 

**As if you needed any proof, my salary is currently 8 Days late as is my Housing Allowance.  I had money saved for just such an occasion, and it is now gone.  In 2 weeks time, I'll be eating with friends instead of cooking, because I'll be out of food.  Nobody cares, you are not an individual here, you are a worker. I'm not the only one, and the guys in charge have turned off their phones.  My accountant here at work tells me "In'shallah Wednesday".  Which means, nobody will answer his questions, and he's hoping we all get paid (including him) by the end of the week.**

Part 2:  Cost of Living

1. The "Western Tax".  There is no tax on salaries or goods and services.  There is however an unofficial "surcharge" on things you buy just because you're from the West, and you need to be careful of merchants who will do this.  For instance a taxi will cost a Filipino or Bengali, or Pakistani or Egyptian or Jordanian about 10-20 SAR.  However the driver attempts to charge me anything between 30-100SAR and I have to argue aggressively before he lowers it.  Usually after he's threatened to call the police and "put you jail". When I tell him to please call the police, or I will call them myself is usually about the time he decides to negotiate.  
1. The "Western Tax Part 2":  If your going to buy a car or rent an apartment, have your Arab friends or fluent Arabic speakers do it for you.  Don't reveal that you're from the west, especially not the US or the UK until a price has been quoted.  For example a used car in good condition can be gotten for about 10k SAR.  That will be 15kSAR if you make the call.  When I rented my apartment, the building manager had already told us what it would cost, when I called I specifically asked about Apt # ___, the one that cost X amount of money.
2. General Living:  You came here for money, now you need to save some money.  There are times that the Kingdom can be pretty darn nice and pretty darn comfortable.  Things can also always change though.  My suggestion is that unless you're working for an Oil company with a 10 year retirement plan, you don't waste your money.  You do your contract maybe renew once or twice and then go home.  You can live on 1000 SAR/Month.  You can live pretty darn well on 2000 SAR/Month, and you can live luxury for 3000 SAR Month. (amounts are assuming prepaid housing)  Don't fall into the trap of thinking everything is cheap and spending money like an idiot on watches, phones, cars, and eating out.  The end result of that is having no more money at the end of your contract than you did at the beginning and being financially unhappy. This place isn't all hardship, but you didn't leave your home country and the comforts of a social life just to buy watches and go out to dinner...did you?

Part 3:  Negotiating your contract

1. You can find very little about the "average wage in the Kingdom" even for your nationality.  It just isn't a topic that people want to discuss and  there is good reason why.  In the beginning, I didn't think it was a big deal and so when another American asked me, I told him.  Up until that point, he was pretty proud of his salary,  2 hours later the guy was complaining to the boss that he would need more money if he were to stay and it wasn't fair and using me and my salary as a reference.  Never again will I make that mistake.  My salary is my business, not yours.  
2. Generally Salaries for Westerners in the Kingdom seem to start at about 12,000 SAR/Month and run up to about a max of 50,000 SAR per month.   Depending on what you do, if you can get yourself a tax free income somewhere in the lower middle of that...you're doing good. 
3. So how do you negotiate?  Well I firmly believe that you need to ignore everybody else and find a number that works for you, something that makes you happy.  Here are two ways to do so.  
1. Decide on the amount that you need in order to be enticed to be away from your family, friends and life for a year (or contract duration).  Add 10%  take the result and this is you're starting point.  A lot can happen at home in a year, you can't be flying out every 30 days to put out fires, you need to make sure it is worth your while to be STUCK here for a year. 
2. Take your US salary and double it.  This is your starting point.  I prefer the method above, but this one works too.  I just think it aims a "little" high.
3. Most importantly though before you start your negotiations, you need to build yourself an excel sheet and layout 3-5 different scenarios regarding monthly income vs. monthly expenditures.  Find out exactly how much you need to maintain both households, pay bills, pay down loans and credit cards, have a savings account and so forth, don't forget flying home at least once a year.  Take this as low as you can to make ends meet.  This is your drop dead number.  Anything below this number costs you money to take this opportunity, That is not a deal you want to make.  My excel sheets spanned a range of 40,000 USD.  I did not get my first request, nor did they get me anywhere near my drop dead number.  I'm somewhere in the middle.  
4. Leave is standard in the Kingdom at 30 days paid per year, although you can sometimes get it up to 45 days. If your teaching find out if you have a year long contract or an academic contract as the latter means you get 60 days off, 30 paid, 30 unpaid.  

One note about negotiating that you should know, an Aussie friend of mine and I were talking about why I don't see that many Americans, especially not American Nurses or Doc's here in Saudi.  Why are they all suddenly Irish and Australian?  She says it isn't sudden, she says it started a while back and that the Americans, the Canadians, and the British priced themselves out of the market.  They wanted better than great salaries, they wanted phenomenal salaries.  

I understand that, if you're one of the few people in the world that can do what you do...but if you're just another engineer, or just another nurse, or just another accountant, you might want to start with a more realistic number...Their are plenty of well educated, English speakers from places you forgot about that will do the job for half of what an American will do it for.  Just some food for thought.

ER Confessions...

Nope, not those types of confessions, but thanks for the blog traffic!

So back in the old days, when yours truly was a newly minted 23 y/o ambulance driver, I couldn't find anybody who wanted me to drive their ambulance!  A girl that I had met while doing clinical rotations (and later ended up dating for two years) introduced me to her boss at the local Emergency Department and I managed to get hired on as an ER Technician.  For the next two years, I spent my time between that ER and school. The best year of it was spent working overnights 7pm to 7am.  We had the best crew possible, and often saw serious cases, especially Cardiac Arrests and Trauma.  I learned some of the most valuable lessons and saw some of the most critical patients long before I ever learned how to start an IV, calculate and push meds or intubate anything.  (I can now do all four simultaneously, underwater, standing on my head, while smoking a cigarette...Trust me...)  Back in the year 2000 we didn't see the ludicrous number of patients that they do today, and we could usually have the ER cleared and the last patient discharged by no later than 2am.  I was usually done with all of my cleaning, stocking and reorganizing duties by about 3 or 4am which left a minimum of 3 hours to kill every night.  1 Doctor, 3 Nurses, 2 Paramedics, 1 ER tech and 1 Coordinator with nothing to do for 3 hours...That, ladies and gentlemen is called a recipe for disaster!  We ate dinner, watched movies, read books and studied...which still left us at least another 90 min!  That time was occupied with wheelchair races, stretcher jousting, prank creation for the day shift, nitro shot contests, ghost hunting in the basement of the hospital, flirting with the nurses aides upstairs and exploration of that still fairly new toy-the internet.  

Our favorite internet hobby was scouring the only free dating website of the day Yahoo!-Personals

We wasted many an hour looking for cute women, watching the girls looking for cute guys and most importantly looking as hard as possible for people we worked with or knew in the hospital so that we could print their entire profile and post it in no less than 50 different locations throughout the facility...I know, I know, its a jerk move.  However, if you tell the truth in your personal ad, you shouldn't have anything to fear right?  We, were, ruthless! and let me tell you, we found a lot of fake people.  Nurse aides who online were suddenly Nurse Practitioners, Nurses who could give "Nurse Ratchet" a run for her money were suddenly "loving and dedicated caregivers" whose only fault was "caring too much".  Paramedics who called themselves "Doc", and quite often EMT's who used the term "medic" like it wasn't supposed to imply "Paramedic" (a cardinal sin in EMS).  People grew 2 inches and lost 30 lbs.  They forgot to mention the hairy mole on their chin, the 3 years they did in the army driving trucks was suddenly classified as "I'm not really supposed to talk about it!"  and maybe most importantly they forgot that they got divorced because they were sleeping with half the town! and suddenly they were "sincerely seeking a loving and trusting long term relationship".-Yeah Right.  We weren't "being jerks", we were "ridding the world of online predators!"  At least that's how we saw it.

12 years later it looks like things have changed...a little.  With the advent of eharmony, match.com and POF it seems the internet dating scene might have improved.   2 years ago in grad school I gave a presentation on POF, prior to the project, I had never heard of such a thing.  I was happily married and had no reason to go exploring the personals.  For the project we created a fake profile (which was deleted by the company within 48 hours) and took the class through the technology and future possibilities for POF.  My main role in the project was to present the idea to the class, which I'm good at and did well in a dynamic way.  The majority of the class denied having ever used such websites and expressed serious hesitation to changing their opinion that online dating was for "other people".  One of the scenarios I gave that did seem to sway some people was a 50 y/o divorced female executive.  Her job and age would prevent her from dating in many of the traditional senses.  Her best bets would be her Church and a referral from a friend.  Both of those have the potential of going very bad.  POF would be perfect for her.  Imagine she lives in a metropolitan area of 200k people.  60% of those will be outside her desired age bracket (40-55) leaving 80k, 50% of those will be married leaving 40k, only 50% of those will try online dating at some point leaving us 20k people.  Now out of that 20k we can whittle it down by education level, children, political views, etc...There is a perfectly reasonable expectation that out of a 200k metro area we can find 100-500 people that meet this woman's desires and expectations in a date or a mate.  She will then be able to pick the ones that seem most alluring to her and safely chat away trying to find the best possibles.  This has always been the expectation with online dating, but in the latter half of 2012 when computers are online more often than not, and we use the internet to book our trips, pay our bills, read our news, listen to our music, map our roads, find a doctor, go to school. and we use smart phones to keep us connected when not on our computers,  I'm beginning to think that this isn't such a ridiculous idea.  Its certainly no more ridiculous than going to a bar or dancing and hoping to meet Mr or Mrs. right.  Or hoping that out of the 10 single women who are age appropriate at your church you're going to find "the one".

This post came because my ex-wife says I need to "move on".  I'm half tempted to tell her that she doesn't want to see that reality, because it might not involve me overseas making big money anymore.  In fact, it very well might involve me packing the truck, grabbing the dogs and heading back West or anyplace nice I find along the way.  

Moving on...I wonder if this online dating shit works half as well as I sold it to my classmates. 

Oh, and as always your comments and thoughts on this one are welcome! 

Islamaphobic?

Uh oh!  I'm blogging about one of those topics.  

Public beheading here I come!  

Actually, I don't think so.  In fact, I'm not worried at all.  

When I came to Saudi Arabia last year, I didn't really know what to expect.  I knew that not everybody rode around on camels, and I also knew that not everybody lived in a Palace and had a fleet of yachts at their disposal, or an Oil derrick in their front yard.  These things however did comprise most of the images I had seen.  I have studied history, read books, read many newspapers both in print and online,  and try and stay very informed about the world I live in.  Despite all of that, and despite the fact that my father had been here before me, I didn't really know what to think about Saudi itself.  I found something that was completely different from anything I had expected. 

Maybe more important than what I discovered about Saudi was what I discovered about Muslims. 

About all I remembered from the comparative  religion class I took in school was that Christians went to churches, Jews went to temples, and Muslims went to Mosques.  If I dig a little deeper into my memory, I remember that Budda is a big guy, and that for some reason the imagery of cows and elephants come to me when I think of Hindu's.  Seems stupid right?  Well a man can't know everything about everything and I had just never worried about it.  It stayed that way until a morning in September, 2001. 

Suddenly, I had to start thinking about it, suddenly I was inundated with images of what "Muslims" looked like, what they believed and where they were from.  Suddenly it was "us" versus "them".  Wait a minute?  I hadn't been to church in years... 

Now, I'm a patriot in the truest sense of the word. I have served my country and always will, I will love her and help her always.  If the men and women elected to lead her become corrupt, it is my solemn duty as a citizen to try and replace them through the legal means provided in the Constitution and the bill of rights.  If I have a question about something, I have the right and the responsibility to ask it...And I had better damn well have the guts to live up to that responsibility or I should just turn in my passport now. 

Wars are wars, I won't discuss those, their possible merits or their possible lack of merits here.  But why do I get a feeling of us versus them?  Who is "us"?  Who is "them"?  The West vs the East?  No Saudi's an ally...So is India...we've been involved with and supported Eastern Nations for years...Christians vs. Muslims???  Didn't that fight already get waged long before we set sail for the new world? 

"Us" vs "Them" is supposed to apply to the peaceful peoples of the world vs those who seek to use violence as a weapon to influence others for religious, political or ideological reasons.  Did everybody get that memo?  I don't know that they did. 

Colonists founded America as a Christian colony of the British crown, But in 1776 while a majority of the population could be considered Protestant Christian, the signers of the Declaration of Independence bound the 13 colonies together in a new way.  The Constitution of the United States adopted 12 or so years later while acknowledging a "Creator" does not specifically name such a Creator.  Practice and law over the centuries between then and now clearly establish a separation of church and state.  (There is a reason for that that the history guys ought to know...).  What America was and has proudly become is the land of freedom and that includes religious freedom. 

So why all the backlash from the Egyptian elections?  Why all the facebook petitions and email warnings and screaming from the rooftops about how the Muslim brotherhood will take over the world if we let them?  Why all the churches and temples holding prayer sessions for Israel?  Why every time I mention something cool that I saw or learned here does somebody say "you're not converting are you!?"  Why do I suddenly feel the need to respond "NO, NO!  Nothing like that!"  I shouldn't feel that way at all, I come from the land of religious freedom, I can be any religion I please including none and it matters not one bit on my status as first and foremost an American Citizen.  Its one of the very core things that gives us our strength as a nation. 

E. Pluribus Unum  Out of many, One.  Everybody remember that? 

I'm watching the situation in Egypt closely, if it starts to go bad, I'll worry.  But its foolish, ignorant, fear-mongering to think that an army of blood thirsty Muslims is going to set out on horseback to destroy Israel just because the brotherhood won an election.  Not to mention the fact that Western Navies patrol the entire area and have enough firepower to destroy the world and send us all back to our respective creators a few hundred times over... 

Since I've been here the past eight months, I've discovered the truth about Muslims.  I might not have known much before I got on the plane, but believe me, I've learned.  The point of this post I guess is that you may not like what I've learned.  

They're just like us.  They're greedy, lazy, and power hungry.  They lie, cheat, steal, have affairs, do drugs, curse, drink and do things they should be ashamed of.  They also act selflessly, love, laugh, marry, have children, hold their wife's hands, abstain from alcohol, and turn the other cheek. They dream, they smile, they hope for a better life for their children, they work hard and long hours, they struggle to achieve the best in life.  They're just like us.  Which I guess brings me to the point of this whole ramble.  When I got here, some went out of their way to welcome me and make me feel as comfortable as possible.  Some went out of their way to do just the opposite, and some just ignored me.  If the tables were turned and the Eastern Muslim man was new in the US, by himself and helping us set up an education program...what would you be to him?  If a gang of kids followed him in a car while he was walking, shouting at him...would you be the one to yell at them? Chase them off?  Maybe just call the police?  Or would you ignore it? 

Are you Islamaphobic?  Why do I hesitate to hit "publish"...Why do I almost fear reprisal for this post from the West more than I fear it from Saudi...Oh well, here goes.