Read Me/Disclaimer

Read Me/Disclaimer: This is a non-political/socio-political blog. It's a running tale of my Saudi Arabian adventure, great, good, bad, and ugly. It is uncensored, and I don't really care what you think of it, read it or don't. I don't care. I did not decide to do this as a means to an end, but rather to document the means with which I occupied my time while waiting for my end... All that being said, I'm an American Expat in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The opportunity to help build this system and the salary that accompanied it were to good to pass up.-Geoff

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"The views presented here are just the views of some asshole named Geoff, they are not necessarily the views of my employer, my co-workers, my family or anybody else. First hand knowledge and second hand accounts were used to compile the information. These are not scientific facts and figures. These views are not necessarily supported, endorsed or even appreciated by the KSA the USA or any other country for that matter and the author makes absolutely no claim that they are."**

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Still here

I saw the tab on the browser..."Blogger: Blogger Dashboard....It was like it was calling out to me today...in all honesty, it's called out to me many days and I've simply ignored it. Not because I don't love writing the blog, not because I don't like my readers, (of whom I doubt I have any left), but because of two much more nefarious culprits. Their names? PUBH 6003 Epidemiology and PUBH 6202 Bio-statistics. All of grad school at a major university is "hard", the term "academically rigorous" is the term the University uses, but it can be stated simply as HARD and convey the appropriate emotion. These two jems however, are a little on the tougher side of HARD, and for the past 20 weeks or so, they've kept  me busy. Hopefully one day I'll write again, hopefully one day I'll go to bed without the thought of z-scores, t-scores, p-scores, confidence intervals and morbidity/mortality rates dancing through my head. Until that day though: here's the latest.

Location: Still in Saudi!, still on the East Coast, which makes it almost three years now. (I'm wrapping up my third academic year).

Latest news: Things are good, I am well, busy, busy, busy, but quite well. I may or may not be moving to Riyadh next year, I've been traveling throughout the Kingdom this year, Jeddah, Riyadh, a week or two in each location, giving seminars for students and Instructors alike. We're working on moving my position officially back to what I was originally brought here to do, Riyadh is where that can happen. So if the Riyadh thing works out, and the schedule is right, I might have another 3-5 years in me. If Riyadh falls through, I think I'll be moving on pretty soon.

At The George Washington University Alumni Meeting in Riyadh, (Hint, I'm the one not in a thobe!)
Miscellaneous stuff: Saudization is in full swing, we could chat about it for hours, I'm of a mixed opinion on it, the reality and the concept don't always match up perfectly. However the point of mentioning it was that I don't see many opportunities for Paramedics (especially from the states) in the near future, so if you get an offer and you want to know anything about the place, feel free to email me before you take the offer, but honestly, I doubt that you'll see a whole lot of offers in the immediate future.