Video: Jeddah – Bab Sharif
District – Bab Shareif by Derek Morales
Remember the old Jeddah pictures? There is a picture of bab shareif. Now the old historic sites are crumbling, they will be demolished no doubt, to make way for modern buildings, malls, and parking lots… the story of modernisation.
Edge Of Arabia
I went with two of my friends, @HameedAnbar and @thamerhsn, to the Edge of Arabia art exhibition which is being held at the park Hayat in Jeddah, the experience was nice, and a first for me to attend such an event.
Going in was a bit of a setback, since the security guys who think they are 50cent and fat Eminem acted like we wanted to enter a club and not an art exhibition, looking at us like we owed them money. It is always funny to me when these guys go on little power trips.
Anyhow, it turned out that we needed an invitation, or should’ve arrived with our families (i.e. have a woman with us).
Lucky for us, Thamer saw one of his filmmaker friends Awadh Alhamzani, who was a presenter, who talked to Steve the Director who let us in with no problems, after that it was just cool.
Now, some of the artwork inside blew me away, other works made me think “whaaaa?” really? You must be kidding me.
It is interesting, to see, and I plan on going again with my wife next time.
It will be on until the 18th of February, so if you are in Jeddah or planning to visit, I recommend you go and see it.
Thanks to @Adnan_Z_Manjal for letting me know about it.
I liked this video, a woman keeps painting this broken car, it resembled to me the status of the never ending debate about women driving in Saudi, they keep getting their hopes high, preparing for it, but the car is broken down and does not seem to go anywhere… but as they say, art is always open to interpretation. (Women Driving in Saudi)
Video: The Ship Maker
The last traditional ship maker in Saudi Arabia, a beautiful documentary about the last of the traditional wooden ship builders.
I loved it when he says
“My son asks me to stop this work and I tell him No, I can’t stop, If I don’t work, I fall sick”
Reminded me of my late grandfather who, worked well into his mid eighties and died while at work, and people younger than I am thinking about early retirement… the last of a dying breed I guess.
Thanks to @Walrex for letting me know about this video.
You know what they call a footlong subway in Saudi Arabia?
Scene
- You know what they call a footlong subway in Saudi Arabia?
- They don’t call it a footlong?
- No they use the metric system
- Ok, what do they call a footlong subway in Saudi Arabia?
- They call it a 30cm subway
- What about a six inch?
- They call it a 15 centimeter subway, oh and they don’t call the thousand islands dressing, thousand islands
- What do they call it then?
- They call it cocktail sauce
(inspired from a scene in pulp fiction with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson.
P.S. A quarter pounder with cheese is still a quarter pounder with cheese at a McDonald’s in Saudi Arabia.
Women are Finally Legally Working
So Saudi women are finally working in stores that they should be working in, what I find funny is that I have seen them working in hardware stores like Extra many months ago advising women on electrical appliances like toasters, microwave ovens, even air conditioners and washing machines (big screen TVs were and probably always will be a man’s territory… all those years looking up to the sky has had to have some kind of impact on our genes 
)
There are economic incentives behind this, 7 billion dollars being pumped out of the country in the second quarter of 2011 alone by foreign workers, anyone can see… it is not good for the economy… it is only good for the one vary famous bank which deals with them every month and gets a transaction fee for every transfer, I think I read that the owner of the back is one of the richest in Saudi, and one of the worst banks to deal with on a personal banking level, it doesn’t make sense… but it does make cents and dollars.
I assume, that once things settle, the big companies that own everything in the malls will begin to employ non-Saudi women, just like they do in other gulf countries, for all the obvious outsourcing (but inwards) reasons, and let’s see if netaqat is also applied to Saudi women, since the labor office says that employing a Saudi woman is equal to employing four Saudi men to fulfill their Saudization quotas, something all governments do in the form of affirmative action (don’t quote me on this, this is what I hear and I am have not seen the labor regulations). So if I had a multimillion dollar business to run, I would have a lot of leeway to play the system.
Some say the head of Hay’a was replaced due to this issue being a problem, I never knew his name until I heard he was being replaced, so good luck to the new guy… remember, change takes time.
Abushaklak
Abu-Shaklak, an abbreviation of a yel3an abu-shaklak (damn the likes of you) which I find myself using way to often as I drive, and since I have a child in the car I have to keep the cussing to a minimum.
Now driving in Saudi is not for the faint hearted, and the drivers are reckless… Of course this has a bit of what George Carlin said “anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac” I will not exempt myself from that.
So with me, it goes like this, a guy cuts me off, abu shaklak… a guy cuts a red light, abu shaklak… a guy does not stop at a stop sign, abu shaklak… a guy opens the window and throws his rubbish out on the streets, abu shaklak… and so on.
So one day, I was driving with my son in the car, the road was clear and I was approaching a traffic light which was green, it turned yellow just as I was on the zebra, so I kept going, it turned red just as I finished crossing the intersection… all was cool… except that my son looked at me in bewilderment and all wide eyed and said… and I quote “Daddy! Now WE are abushaklak!”
All I could say was… yes we are… yes we are.