All things....

...must come to an end.

Well, it happened.  Algonquin College has taken over the management of the school as of August 17, 2013 from Cadre (my employer).  As I wholly expected, they decided that they do not really need a Chair for each of the two programs that are currently offered and, since I'm not a Canadian and the other Chair is, I wasn't offered the option of transferring my contract to them.  (I suspect that's the main reason, they didn't offer any reasoning and I didn't bother to ask since it wouldn't make any difference.)  So, where to from here?

I'm headed home on July 3rd and will arrive on the 4th (in plenty of time for fireworks.)  I'm certainly looking forward to getting reacquainted with my lovely wife and visiting with friends.  Now it appears that some of my time will be taken up with job hunting - oh joy!  I'm too young (and poor) to retire.  We already have quite a bit planned for the month of July and half of August but hopefully a lot of that includes friends and relatives.

Apparently Cadre is going to/will try to find me some appropriate work within the kingdom but I'm not holding my breath.  I suspect that I'll have to return after Ramadan and Eid to sort things out and get my final pay or move on to where ever.  I have received a request for my CV from Yanbu Industrial College which is located on the Red Sea about 300 km north of Jeddah and west of Medina.  It looks to be even hotter there but it is further from Yemen (for those concerned with my safety - even though Jizan is safe.)

I will certainly miss many of the friends I have made here, those who have moved on, those who are continuing here and the many Saudis it is my honor to count among my friends and to have worked alongside.  I will miss the students, some of whom are very close, even the ones who have left the college for various reasons.  The mission is good, I hope they become successful, their future and the country depend on their efforts.

The 'Grand Canyon' of KSA

I took a trip out to Wadi Lajab with one of my co-workers the other weekend.  It is a preserve area which is mostly undeveloped and really quite beautiful.  I set up an Earthcache 'somewhere' within the canyon (GC4D91J) which I hope some 'cachers will have fun finding and give them a reason to explore this area.

Spokesy and I wandered through here.  I was taking all the pictures.  A short ways into the shorter canyon I came up to him sitting down with two Saudis, one from Sabia (didn't speak English) and his friend from Riyadh (fluent English - educated in Scotland) who invited us to tea.  They were very curious about us and how we came to KSA.

Later on, there were a couple more Saudis who stopped us and asked if they could take our picture, we obliged.  One of them worked for an area newspaper and they asked us how we liked the area, etc.  The following Saturday one of Spokesy's students told him that he saw our picture in the newspaper over the weekend.  Wish I had a copy of it or the link to share.

Sentinel trees at one entrance to
the canyon

The colors and lighting were beautiful

Find the frog...

A smallish rock (~12") with bright colors

Tree looks like it's ready to
take a walk

Place where some dive when there
is more water - quite a few fish here

My friend who came along with me
to explore this area

The rocks were very cool since not too much
sunlight finds it way down here in a day

Don't think I'd be comfortable
way up there

The varying textures of the erosion makes
this area really beautiful

The colors that go along help with the beauty

Little seat

A determined tree pays no heed to the
placement of rocks

Looks like puzzle pieces

This is an area of dissolving
erosion instead of flowing water
erosion

The obligatory lizard 'shading' himself

PSA from KSA

I had forgotten this before - if you aren't an organ donor, please consider it.  Also, here's a link for another organization that I think is worth joining, I joined when I was donating blood all the time: http://marrow.org/Home.aspx?src=origEnews-june2013

For Americans - how to find your Representative and your Senator:
http://www.senate.gov/
http://www.house.gov/

For your U.S. Representative you will have to know your zip+4 which you can find here: https://www.usps.com/  To the left there is a 'button' for ZIP, click that and enter your address in the pop-up.

Three times a year you should look at your credit report to ensure that you don't have anyone trying to steal your identity and ruin your financial standing.  You can get to all of the 'big' three here (only from the U.S.): https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp.  If you set a schedule of, say, January, May & September you can get a free report (one per credit agency) and there will be directions on what you need to do to correct any errors in your financial record.

Here's a link to a site that lists recall information for various reasons: http://www.recalls.gov/

Want to look up about that email you received that you 'must' forward to all your friends?  Well here's a few sites you can use to verify if it's a hoax or not: 
http://snopes.com/
http://www.factcheck.org/
http://urbanlegends.about.com/

Need to check if that creeper you just met doesn't seem to be quite right? Look here:  http://www.nsopr.gov/

Want to look up how much some money would be in another currency?  
Go here: http://www.xe.com/

Have fun and surf safely out there!

Drive-about

Okay, this was a long drive.  I traveled from where I 'live' in Jizan west to the Najran area and back again in one day.  I left about 9:30 a.m. on Thursday and got back about 1:00 a.m. on Friday morning, a bit over 15 hour drive - was my butt sore when I got back and all the next day.  I'm getting too old for this stuff.  However, as usual, there was a lot of pictures to be taken and this blog doesn't write itself (I wish!).

I was looking for the 'mesas' located (here) over near Najran city.  I had been looking at the area using Google Earth and noticed these flat-topped mountain areas.  Since my Garmin GPS does not have all the maps of every road in KSA I was using the directions from Google maps.  I had very carefully gone over the length of the trip, marking all the turns so I'd know where to go this time.  (My Gentle Readers might recall the previous excursion with Shamun and how badly we got lost misdirected but still ended up where we intended.)  Then I switched between Google and my GPS mapping software, carefully copying all the 'turns' and getting the correct latitude and longitude for each point.  Then I uploaded all that information to my GPS and headed out.  Funny thing though, if you name all the turns 'turn' on the map only one gets copied, I didn't have any of the data I needed.  Fortunately for me I have an innate sense of going the wrong way even if it requires going the wrong way every time and turning around at the same place every time.  So, now I know how to take the shortest route over the mountains.  There is quite a bit of very interesting scenery along that 5-6 hour stretch.

Some more stone huts of stacked rock

Close up of the one on the top of the hill

Oddly enough, there seem to  be quite a few of these roofless huts around but only in areas with flat rocks to build them.  There are a few that look as if they are specifically 'pens' for goat herds but I can't imagine needing a door and a window for goats.

Big lake in a wadi along the road in the
mountains, the roads are steep and the
drops almost shear

The roads certainly are no where near as bad and scary as the ones up to Fifa.  However, there are still very few barriers on the edges and no guardrails at all.  One wrong turn would be all it would take and there are cars and parts of vehicles to prove the problem with not paying attention while driving.  One nice thing was that there is very little traffic on this road.  The bad thing is that the traffic that is on the road is usually either a big truck or some Saudi with a four-wheel-drive or a pickup truck and they go quite fast and are not too particular which lane they are traveling in when going around a curve no matter which way they are going.

She looked at me as if to ask if I had
something to eat or drink

Fancy 'welcome' sign before heading
up the steep hill, did I mention it was steep?

It never ceases to amaze me what I might see along the roads here in the most out of the way places.  Camels, they must belong to someone yet they are just roaming around.  Yes, there are plenty of herds of them down here on the 'flats' but up in the mountains who knows?  The same goes for donkeys, all over the place where you'd least expect them.  They don't seem to have a home.  Again, here in flat-land, the donkeys usually belong to some one as denoted by the saddle on their backs if not a person as well.  Up in the hills where one might expect it, not so much.

I gave these three boys a ride from some
nondescript "driveway" to this store

Now goats on the other hand, while still milling about where ever they please, look mostly like they are from a herd or at least domesticated.

Mud brick tower/house? with
flat rock 'eaves' to help keep
the bricks from eroding in a
rainstorm, mostly worked it seems

They look like Purple Martin houses

Right next to the road was
this mud brick two-story
fixer-upper

I liked the color of the setting sun on
this hillside

It is amazing what some of the 'glitzier' things are in KSA.  Lights, and especially brightly colored lights, are the norm everywhere.  Around Jizan almost every large building has some sort of 'faux-neon' rope lighting on it or around part of it.  The street lights have the same running up and down the pole which in many cases seem to be different colors on different streets.  So, the two examples below are perfectly the norm.  At least the 'awful tower' below is within the surrounding city, the 'oasis' is nowhere near anything but perhaps there is a city of sorts to the left of the 'sign', that way was "the road not taken" which probably doesn't make a difference.

If you squint really hard you
can almost imagine you're in
Paris...not

The welcome sign lit up

There are some STEEP roads up
through the mountains

The drive-about path, an amazing
trip, I'll be doing it again sometime

Maybe my son can translate the sign above, it's beyond my skill level.

Thought I'd throw out the graph of my 'climb' through the hills.  There is really some steep sections on the way to and from Najran.  If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the elevations I was driving through all the way back down to sea level of Jizan.  This is representative of the path shown starting at about the center of the other map below. I didn't get the full 'round trip' because my GPS can only hold so many 'bread crumbs' before they start dropping off.  

The temperature went from mid to upper 30's (35 C = 95 F) down to 16 C in parts of the mountains (61 F).  I had to close my windows, it was freezing!  Up in the plateau region in the cross section above the temperature was in the low 30's C but since it was so much drier than down here on the coast it was quite pleasant.  

One of the reasons I came back when I did (I got in about 1:00 a.m.) was to be away from the city lights when the sun went down.  The colors of the sun on the mountains and shadows were very pretty but the camera I have is no good at taking those shots.  When it got dark, and it did get DARK, the skies were clear and full of stars.  I'd almost forgotten how many there are and it reminded me of growing up in VT and seeing the Milky Way almost any night I wanted to do so.  It was really beautiful - no pictures, same camera - and I'll have to go back there again sometime to find my mountains and get more scenic photos.

I'm fine, wasn't even involved...

First off, here's a fun (23 minute) video by a very funny comedian who performed in KSA (I don't know when or where as it wasn't advertised anywhere near Jizan, being 'haram' and all.): Fluffy goes to KSA  Some of what he says about the people and places hits the nail on the head.  It's worth watching.

Here's a story to file under the category of "unbelievable": http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/indian-rapist-to-marry-filipina-victim-1.1180442  Oh, and there was another story in the news here where a guy, at the insistence of his fiance, married her two friends at the same time - each one has a separate apartment.  Just plain weird, it almost makes same-sex marriages seem like they should have been standard all along.

One of my co-workers a few weeks back was walking across a divided road (as are most roads around here) and he had looked to the left crossing the first side, no problem.  As he stepped off the median after looking to the right for oncoming traffic he was hit (picture of the car below.)  Eye-witnesses said he went about 3 meters in the air (about 10 feet) bounced on the hood of this car and then smashed into the windshield.  Yeah, I guess the car was going that fast.  The wrong way down the street.  Next to the median and not over by the shoulder where 'wrong-way' drivers usually go.

Now, another of my co-workers went with 'Joe' to the hospital to get checked out.  A third co-worker stayed at the scene after calling the police to come take a report.  The hospital apparently was waiting on the police report for some reason before treating Joe, don't ask me why.  'Moe' waited about an hour and a half before calling the police again and, perhaps injudiciously, intimated that the police should do their job.  I don't know exactly what was said but it didn't go over well except for getting the police to show up in very short order.  Now in the U.S. the usual first questions would be related to the accident at hand, not so in the Magic Kingdom.  The policeman wanted to know who had spoken with him on the phone and Moe allowed as it had been him.  Guess what, they took Moe to jail.  I don't know how long they were going to keep him but it took some intervention of one of our Saudi co-workers to talk the police into accepting the second apology from Moe.  Go figure.

Joe did get checked out, no broken bones apparently, he was very lucky.  I suspect due to the fact that he was completely unaware of the oncoming car, he didn't have time to tense up.  If he had, he would likely have had two broken legs.  Also, landing on the car instead of the pavement probably saved him from too serious of a concussion.

Caught on the right-front corner

Epilogue: Joe couldn't get his iqama back from the police until he had 'forgiven' the driver for hitting him while driving the wrong way down the road and nearly doing serious bodily harm.  Of course that means he could not sue the driver.  Unbelievable, there are no words.  Never did hear anything about the driver but I'm sure he was more worried about his car.

Joe came back to work after about a week or so but I'm sure he'll look BOTH ways before crossing any roadway from now on.

Quick pics

Removed one pop top to find another
underneath

First mango seed is sprouted

And in 24 hours, up pops a couple 'trees'

I half expected to find grated bits of
citrus peel inside - but didn't

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