CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

We’re jetlagged as hell, as you can imagine. I’ve been up since 3AM Manila time and Vanessa has not slept. The Bug has slept soundly the whole night, though, God bless him.

I was really counting on getting nicorette here in Manila, but apparently it is no longer sold here. This is upsetting. I actually scared the pharmacy girl when I exclaimed, “WHAT??? NO LONGER SOLD HERE?!?!?!?” So anyway I am having some shipped here to the Manila Intercontinental hotel from America, which means $140 in shipping and then the Filipino government will tax it 50%. Damn I wish I had never started smoking.

I like Cebu Air because it’s cheap, eg $33 one way to Bangkok. You gotta love that. I can’t imagine how they make a profit, but who am I to complain. Anyway I told Vanessa that if she’s too afraid of typhoons, she must select a different location, otherwise we’re heading to Bora as planned. I personally think a typhoon or two would be fun. I’ve never actually experienced a typhoon.

We just checked in to the Manila Intercontinental about an hour ago.. I must say, I have never been so happy to get to Manila. I’m well on record for not particularly liking Manila, which is, in my eyes, just another overcrowded Asian metropolis. Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo… they’re all pretty much the same at the bottom, expensive and overcrowded. However Manila is fast becoming a second home and we are certainly pleased to be here. Also I am drinking rum and coke at the moment, and it’s been 6 months since the Cheetahhhhhhh had a drink, so GOD BLESS!

We are planning to go to Bora but it was hit by a typhoon a few days ago and there are 14 typhoons predicted for July including a big mother typhoon which is apparently bearing down on us right now, and my mother in law Nanay Gloria is worried, so now Vanessa is worried also. I said we can stay in a concrete hotel, and after all, business will go on, however Van is scared, so now I’m not entirely sure what we will do. Our objective is to spend July on a tropical beach. Cebu Air flies to Thailand and to Bali, so these are options, but Thailand has dengue fever and Bali has terrorism, so we have some shit to worry about wherever we go, and I said to Vanessa, let’s do the typhoon.

We should be escaping from Saudi today. Yesterday we couldn’t get on to a standby flight. I upgraded our tickets to first class and so we are flying out today, in sha allah (if God wills it). We should be in Manila at the Astor hotel in about 36 hours, and we will fly to Bora on Tuesday.

We only have internet access at this airport cafe, and so we’ve been out of touch for 3 days now, and the US stock market has taken a major downturn. I have lost a lot of money and it’s way too late to do anything about it except wait for the market to rebound. Considering seasonal patterns, ie we’re in the summer doldrums, this may not be for 2-3 months. If I had had internet access, I would have sold futures to hedge the downturn, and we wouldn’t have lost any money. But as it stands I have suffered my biggest loss ever. It’s only in market value though; we will recoup when the market resumes its upward climb. In particular we are invested long in GE and Citibank, both of which I thought had hit good support levels. Now they’re killing us financially. However actually I think the chances are good we will hit a triple bottom and the stock market will quickly rebound, and if not quickly, probably by the end of August. So at the moment I’m only sad financially in the short term.

However I will note, this escape from Saudi has been extremely expensive. From shipping our stuff out, to having to go to the Radisson when our aircon broke…. etc etc… the last fortnight has been costly, yes indeed.

We are trapped at the Jeddah airport. Little Chris is bored and I explained to him that waiting around in airports is a big part of the expat lifestyle.

Well as my loyal readers know, that knucklehead Abdul Ghani let my reservations expire, and so we are stuck here waiting for a seat on standby.  Unfortunately this is the vacation season and so everybody is flying home, and considering half the population if Saudi is expat workers, this means half the country is flying out right now. We waited around half the day yesterday but didn’t get a seat. I would have upgraded our tickets to first class, just so we could get the frak out, but the people in the ticket office are so frakkin slow, they didn’t manage to do the tickets before the airplane doors closed. I was livid actually.

We found a wireless hotspot in a cafe in the airport, and checking the Saudia website I see we can get a confirmed ticket to Bangkok on Jul 19, New York on Aug 1st, of Manila Aug 18th. So in the meantime we are on standby. We’re going to try to get on the flight to Manila tonight but I am not hopeful. If not, I will book us on first class to Manila tomorrow. This will make me even more unhappy because it will cost me about a grand extra.

It is really challenging to be on standby with your family here in Jeddah. For one thing we have an infant who can’t sit still for more than a minute and this would generally be challenging enough. To top that off, however, the food here is bad, the airport hotel is a dive with no redeeming qualities, and we have an obscene amount of luggage which nearly broke the 38 year old Cheetahhhhhhh’s back yesterday. To make matters even more challenging, Saudis do not wait in line or have any concept of ordinary civilized behavior, so while standing in lines, I have to be continually yelling at Saudis, “Kuntu hunaka owelen!” ie “I was here first!” Saudis are generally quite surprised to be scolded in Arabic and will get behind me.

Anyway chaps,, keep your fingers crossed for us.

It’s 930AM here in Saudi and I am about to embark on another day of nonsense. I have spent the last several days running around accomplishing very little in 130F heat. It’s been sheer nonsense. The Saudi bureaucracy is byzantine, to say the least. For example yesterday I had to get a signature from one guy, take it to another guy for his signature, and then take it back to the first guy for his signature again. However I am mildly hopeful that today should be the end to this nonsense. I must stress mildly. If all goes well, I will have my pay and passport and ticket, which means tonight we will ship off the last of our boxes, and tomorrow morning we will go to Jeddah to await our flight.

The folks at Teggatz Media Enterprises Inc. have asked me to make a Saudi page attached to this blog. I agreed because actually I get a good dozen emails every year from people asking me questions about working in Saudi. At the moment, if you didn’t know, I don’t actually say much about Saudi in my blog, for the simple reason that I have to live here, and would prefer to avoid any Bin Laden type incidents. However while I am sitting on the beach in Bora I will crank out a frank discussion of working here. And despite my complaints in recent days, this has actually been good for my family and I, mostly from a financial perspective of course, but also in other ways.

However I will note something right now. I am really sick of people deciding I need to save my soul and convert to Islam. About once or twice a month, some random stranger will start going on to me in disjointed English about how I have to convert. This pisses me off on so many levels. In America I would simply tell the zealot to fuck off. Here, I keep quiet, once again to avoid a Bin Laden type incident.  Anyway yesterday I am trying to get a signature from an RC official and he holds me at his desk for 45 minutes, explaining to me that I can’t go to heaven if I continue with being a Christian. Because I wanted to get his signature as expediently as possible, I just said nothing. However I woke up this morning just annoyed to the core about it. I think in the Emirates, if nonsense like this happens, I will actually express my real opinion to such talk.

As you may have seen on the news, a typhoon his the Philippines and directly  struck Leyte, where our house is. Our house’s roof was damaged and the terrace was flooded, but otherwise no big deal. Our neighbor Nanay Loling’s roof blew off. Several houses were destroyed and people are homeless, and several people were killed. Electricity and water are out, as is the Carigusan bridge. None of our relatives were hurt though. Hula.
As my family in the States already knows, we are screwed here. All our plans have been messed up. For a start, the Royal Commission guy in charge of all our paperwork did absolutely nothing. This is typical for him, a one Abdul Ghani, and I hope nobody ever has to rely on this fellow, because he is utterly worthless. I have spent the last three days running around Yanbu trying to get signatures so we can leave. Everybody always asks me, why isn’t Abdul Ghani doing this? And I reply, “Yes indeed, why isn’t he?” In particular he let our reservations to the States on Saudi Airlines expire, and then he avoided me for several weeks because he knew I’d be mad. And because of arcane rules here, I can only fly on Saudia at the government rate, and that means I can’t fly to the States until Jul 29 now. Naturally I am not going to wait in Yanbu for a month, so I managed to get us standby tickets to Manila.

However I have not even been paid, nor do we have exit visas (you can’t just leave Saudi, you need a visa to depart), nor do we even have the Manila tickets. I couldn’t get the Manila tickets because Saudia ran out of paper to print them. I haven’t been paid because I can’t get the electricity bill, and I can’t get the electricity bill because the guy who makes the bills is in the hospital, and only he can make the bills. I could go on and on actually. I am very frustrated today. I spent four hours running around the Royal Commission and actually accomplished nothing whatsoever. It’s enough to make me cry, but I’m too exhausted and tired to expend the energy crying.

Anyway I am going to miss my sister’s wedding and my 20th high school reunion, which makes me very upset. The only saving grace in all this is we will go spend the summer in Bora, which is an idyllic beach paradise. Thank God for Bora, otherwise I don’t know what we’d do. (I cancelled our backup plans to Thailand because dengue fever has been reported in the Thai islands, and I caught dengue 4 years ago and it almost killed me, so I’m not going to risk it again.)

I finished my last duties today. I cheerfully announced to my colleagues, “I no longer work here!”

I have complained to just about everyone with an ear about my ticket situation. Today I took the plunge and complained in Arabic. Speaking Arabic takes a lot of effort, so I generally try to avoid it. Anyway the secretary at the college seems to have taken the cue and asked for my hospital number so he could close my file there. I believe things like this are what are holding up my ticket. Vanessa thinks it may be some kind of conspiracy, but I think it’s just slowness and incompetence. Despite the secretary getting off his arse and doing something, I am still very doubtful about getting to the States. Nevertheless you never know, things may still work out.

The Royal Commission is starting to install new aircon in our apartment, which is a minor miracle. Hopefully we can check out of the Radisson in a day or two. It’s nice here and we have a pool and Showtime, but nevertheless, I now understand why fathers continually fret about expenses, and this is obviously an expense we’d be better off avoiding.

Tomorrow I supervise an exam and I’m done with all my duties. I finished my grades, just have to stand in an exam for 2 hours tomorrow to prevent cheating. I’ll be all done at about 11AM tomorrow.

We shipped off 5 big boxes today. We’ll have about 3 more boxes and our house will be empty.

The RC still has made no move to fix our aircon and so we’re still at the Radisson. The expense is a bit upsetting to me, but it’s better than living in our oven of an apartment. It’s a bit cinder block apartment building and without aircon, it is literally like an oven. I’m trying to find a private person to repair our aircon, which might be part of the Royal Commission’s sneaky strategy… ie wait so long to do anything that people fix things themselves.

An update on our ticket situation, apparently there are 5 people leaving the 2 colleges here in town, both run by the Royal Commission, and all 5 are in the same situation as us. Several have been able to confirm that their reservations were allowed to expire. So I will be candid with you, I’m going to be very pleasantly surprised if we actually make it to the States this summer. I’m extremely doubtful and am proceeding to make alternate plans. This is difficult because unfortunately I can get no concrete information from anybody. Yesterday I went and complained to a supervisor at the Royal Commission, but he knew nothing and, once again to be perfectly candid, complaining to supervisors appears to accomplish very little around here. So in short I still know absolutely nothing, but with 9 days to go, everything looks very doubtful.

Well the Royal Commission housing dept. did not show up, predictably enough. As I mentioned before, it took me 6 months to get my dish washer fixed, and I’ve been waiting 2 years for the garbage disposal to be repaired. Unfortunately it’s summer in the desert and it’s 45C. I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit but I can tell you it’s FRAKKIN HOT. So we checked in to the Radisson SAS Yanbu, which is quite nice actually, on the Red Sea. The only thing bad is that I’m paying SAR455 a night for aircon. That’s about $130, and I’ll bet you our aircon won’t be repaired before we leave. I know one of my colleagues lived without aircon for half a year. The whole family was getting very cranky without aircon and we had to keep the doors and windows open, which means the mosquitoes were feating on us all night. Poor Bug has about 15 infected bites because he won’t stop scratching. So as you can imagine, we are tremendously relieved to be here at the Radisson, and we’re feeling a whole lot less cranky already.

Vanessa and the Bug are back from their holiday in the Philippines.

We have almost our whole house packed up in shipping boxes. It’s surprising how much stuff we’ve accumulated over 3 years. We’re shipping it all to our house in Capoocan, but our house is a rather small bungalow, and I will literally need to buy another house in Capoocan just to have a place to put our stuff.

In the tropics, ie in Capoocan, if you don’t continually use your things, they start to grow mold. When Vanessa was there, she spent a lot of time cleaning off the mold. Kind of upsetting actually. I have to have my mother-in-law get plastic airtight boxes to store all our things.

Our air conditioner is down. This is a major disaster when you’re in the middle of the Arabian desert. I got almost no sleep last night because I was sweating so much. I’m going to go to the Royal Commission housing office in a few minutes, but they are not big on timeliness. It took 6 months to get our dish washer fixed, for example. We may end up moving into a hotel tonight. This would be unfortunate because it will cost a lot. There are only two decent hotels here in town, and they are both expensive. However I am not going to spend another night rolling around in bed sweating.

OK, what I am about to say is partly another warning to my family at home in the States. As a preface, let my say, I am going to do everything possible to get to Wisconsin in 11 days. However it’s not looking good. It’s June 14th and so we have 11 days to go. I still don’t have our tickets to the States. I have gone beyond concerned, to the point where I am making worst-case-scenario plans. I checked on Saudi airlines and because our free annual tickets must be flown on Saudia at the government rate, it is not easy to get seats. And I am 95% sure that the %$#&! jerk who is in charge of this let my reservations expire. And the next available flight to the States is Aug 29th. Obviously we are not going to spend the summer here in Yanbu. Indeed we are leaving on the 25th, it is simply becoming a question of where to. I might have to abandon my free annual tickets and pay for a flight somewhere out of my own pocket. Because I refuse to spend our savings, this would put a crimp in our budget. I think as a worst-case-scenario, we will fly to Bangkok. The tickets are relatively cheap and we can sit on a Thai beach fairly inexpensively.

Although I would love to sit on a Thai beach for the summer, nevertheless, this would create a whole slew of problems. I actually have a deal of business that needs to be done in the States, and there is my sister’s wedding party, and my 20th high school class reunion. Also my new job has already bought us tickets Madison-Dubai. Also we need to get Vanessa a visa to the Emirates, and this would be easiest to accomplish at the Emirati embassy in Chicago. So my worst-case-scenario plan is exactly that, it will create a lot of problems.

I need to make a worst-case-scenario because the guy who is in charge of getting me our tickets is completely incompetent and unreliable. And I have evidence–albeit I could be wrong–that he has let our reservations expire. Also he is not answering his cell phone, which means he has nothing good to tell me. However everything may turn out well in the end, you never know.