Thank God for Drugs

Only the legal kind, anti-inflammatories and pain killers, along with the ice as soon as I went over the ankle gave me a great nights sleep and the foot felt brilliant in the morning HOORAY.....

My poor beloved received an unexpected gift when pulling in to take a photo for me, a screw in the tyre, luckily he left it in place and we continued on our way, praying we would get home, and then having reached home, praying that it would get my beloved to work in the morning so some nice man could help him get the tyre sorted. It turned out to be an excessively long screw that was gifted to him, so glad we left it in place, I remember seeing a movie or two and if you have something sticking out of your body that should not be there you are best to leave it in place and seek the appropriate attention, I can report this is the best course of action for a tyre too....

On Monday night I decided to make a Chicken Biriyani, now as you know we don't eat rice, so I replaced it with grated cauliflower, and it was superb, wetter that your usual Biriyani but equally as tasty, and oh so very hot, the spices were from a mix I found in the one of the stores, they know how to do a spice rack here, well apart from Thai 7 spice that is, thankfully we had Schwartz delivered from the UK along with smoked sea salt and dog treats and toys.

I didn't make the spa presentation after all, so after going out on a limb and throwing caution to the wind, my Iqama let me down, well the fact that I don't have it yet that is, no Iqama no get into the compound the spa presentation was being held on, next time it is then.

Poor old Stitch had to go to the vet on Monday evening, before leaving Cyprus we had to give him another rabies injection to make sure he had enough of those antibodies coursing through his system, the trouble is that meant we could not get a blood test done on him to check that he had the right levels to be able to travel without any delays or imprisonments, so on Monday the poor little fellow had his leg shaved and blood taken, the test has to be sent away to Europe which is why is cost more than a flight home to Scotland, in 90 days time he will be fit to fly, not that we want him getting too excited cos he ain't going nowhere soon..........but in 90 days at least he would be able should we decide to give him a holiday.

Last night we went for a meal at this wonderful venue, the food was delicious, the company delightful but the water more than a touch overpriced, who cares the food was delicious the company delightful......... 

Dangerous Bed

Thursday was Ladies Coffee morning at the compound, and I met some of the girls that live here, and some of their children too, I also got to eat pecans from South Carolina via a cookie from Karen who hails from that neck of the woods. Having joined the Whatsapp for the compound there are invites being offered and I have taken myself in hand, gone right out of my comfort zone, so far out I not sure I know myself and I am going to be engaging in an Arabic night on 29th at Zamil village, as long as I don't think about it my comfort zone doesn't get a touch of stage fright or make me sick..... I have also excepted another invitation to the Aramco compound for a Thalion Spa presentation, I did ask my beloved what an SPA was as I read it like so S.P.A doh, so tomorrow I will be heading off just after 8am for my SPA presentation, comfort zone, comfort zone why have you forsaken me.......

My beloved arrived home in the early hours of Friday Morning, bringing with him the news of the passing of the Saudi Arabian King, and so Long live the new King. 

I left my beloved to sleep whilst I went to the gym then organised the house, he eventually woke and I fed him and we caught up on his news from Tunisia and how he managed to get ten tins of Harrisa through the airport at Doha, hooray! Been a while since we had proper Harrisa

We went out yesterday after our gym visit and were delighted to find quite a few stores open, so one of the stores we discovered was City and a lovely store it was too, all kinds of household goods oh and a Costa coffee tucked away in the corner, not my favourite coffee usually but the Arabic coffee is so not to my liking I thought surely the Italian coffee can't be so bad, and I was pleasantly surprised to find my Americano delightful to the palette, I really am becoming multicultural with my coffees. From here we headed to Homecentre and my beloved almost fell in a dead faint when we purchased our new bedding, a fitted sheet, a flat sheet, a duvet cover for summer and a bedspread for now, plus four pillows, how mucccccch he breathed from his semi upright position, I reminded him had he been in the UK it would have cost a lot more than our SAR for the same bed sets.... So we now have a lovely set for our bedroom and the colour is not my usual choice either, it's somewhere between English mustard and baby poop and I love it..

We took a trip downtown and again were pleasantly surprised to find some of the stores were open, we found all sorts of stores from bedding to Abaya's to shoe stores and food, and had a ball walking in and out of the little alleyways of streets not knowing what was around the corner, when 4pm arrived the noise on the streets increased with the street hawkers shouting out their wares. 

It turns out that our bed is a very dangerous place to be, and I'm not talking about the sleeping arrangement, whilst making the oversized bed which doesn't fit our lovely bedding we received as a wedding gift hence the new extra large bedding, I got caught up in the bedspread and crunch! thats the ankle buggered, I have been icing it ever since with ice wrapped in a tea towel, when the dog isn't stealing my ice that is...

 

Home Alone

Thank you to the lovely company that allowed us to have a long weekend for my first weekend in KSA, we shopped for food, household items and just generally browsed, So far Al Khobar and Dammam appear quite flat which is fine for me, because it actually means I can get my bearings easily, well as long as the weather is such that the view is not obstructed by mist/fog or haze, the lovely water tower that sits on the edge of The Corniche can be seen from our compound when it's clear, which gives me a great idea of where I am in the countryside, My Beloved on the other hand probably hasn't noticed that it can be seen from home, and is still using waze to get from A to B, not sure it is looking after him so well as he was on the way to his work, and whilst daydreaming he missed his turning on the motorway, and waze told him in 94km you can U turn, so my beloved decided completely out of character to go off road and find another route back, which turned out to be far less than 94km, maybe my off road don't care if I'm lost nature is rubbing off on him.

I have now joined the facebook group for our compound and Whatsapp keeps me up to date with the ladies and what is going on, I have the bus timetable thanks to an email from Pamela and on Monday I took my first solo adventure into KSA, admittedly it was just to Lulu's one of the large supermarkets, but it's a start.  

So in Lulu's I found lots of nice Abaya's and after traipsing back and forth between the Abaya section and the changing room I made the decision to buy two rather big black numbers, well there is no way you could call them a little black number... I have been informed that most of the shops don't have changing rooms which means you have to purchase and take home any items of clothing you buy, which must be why when I went to the ladies room in Dhahran Mall there were whole rows of ladies cubicles for trying on clothes, now I wish I could remember what the sign said as at the time I thought to myself that must be the sit down toilets!!!! but no it was the changing rooms, quite a clever idea as so far I have noticed the shops display signs which say 3 days for returns, and some sales are only one day for returns offft.

My Beloved has left me, not even a week and he has flown out leaving the hound and I alone and in charge of the house, I don't even get to keep the car, as we all know I can't drive it outside the compound, and I can't see Stitch enjoying cruising the compound half as much as running the paths, even if I did crank the music up for him with a little track blasting WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, WOOF!!!!! So Stitch and I have been walking 
around our little compound getting acquainted with everyone we meet, the gentleman at the shop the other evening said 'wow he sits outside and waits for you??',  'of course he does' I informed him (but only because he is tied to the post), he would only have to sniff eau de cat and he would be goneeeeeeeee.

So I have been trying to sort out my VPN over the last few days, and talk about frustrating, I have internet drops, password issues and DSN what the hell is that all about, so now I have emailed said VPN provider and told them to please help little old me, as I haven't had a decent boost of Netflix for quite some time, I await their response.........

Poked, Prodded and drained

Going back the way, before leaving Cyprus my beloved had to get a full work medical this involved multiple tests, ECG, auditory and all manner of blood, urine and the obligatory drug tests, these tests allowed him to begin work in KSA, then we both flew back to the UK for more medicals for our Iqama which involved for myself a little bleed, a little pee and a few questions, my beloved had pretty much the same, then he jetted back to Saudi for his last leg of the Iqama residency process.  So fast forward 2 and a half months to January and I am now in country and beginning my own Iqama process and more medicals.  My medical involved a very nice lady taking a picture of my chest, another lady taking a gallon of blood from my arm, a pee sample being passed and exchanged for a piece of paper, think I was the lucky one in that exchange, and then ...(apologies in advance) poop sample..... I don't know about you but I cannot poop on command, so I had to take the little pot with the red lid home until nature called.  I have been trying to figure out why anyone would need a poop sample for a residency visa, but mine is not to wonder why so they say. Oh yeah and I just remembered whilst we were waiting for the chest x-ray we were given fig roll biscuits, maybe they were hoping that would help with the nature on demand business, well it might had I eaten them, but hell no, I definitely don't eat that kind of carbs, we graciously excepted them and put them in my bag.....had they offered carrot cake I would have been compelled to eat it as it would have been just plain rude to refuse carrot cake.

Look at this baby I have been after one of these since forever, well at least since my beloved and I have been together

My beautiful new food processor

The courgettes I used for practice

and finally I purchased it, after much deliberating I settled on the brand I required and then headed to the supermarket for some food to chop. 

We have taken Stitch for a walk along the sea front, throwing his lead for him to chase, Stitch has three favourite toys, one orange ball found at Limassol beach probably dropped but a young child or baby and the other two are not even toys they are leads wrapped into knots that he just loves to chase, he will also carry them where ever he goes should the fancy take him, so today we threw his lead for him and he raced off to fetch it, occasionally having his head turned by a butterfly that past his line of vision, and then he would chase that too.

We have had our first visitors too (well since I arrived), a couple of old buddies from way back when, one Sheila and Jockess and a very pleasant evening unfolded with the visitors amusing Stitch and Stitch returning the compliment, he really is so much better with people now, in fact he even has young children knocking at the door for him to go out and play now....

Found this fella in the towel department 

His

Hers, not that I will be driving anytime soon

Settling In

Well so far I have been to the Mall twice and done the supermarket rush, I only mean rush because we had to get in before prayer time and my poor beloved could not believe we managed to stay inside till the next prayer time, whereby we had to throw our groceries through the checkout, hoping to get the beep from the till before the call finished and we were stuck at the till, luckily we managed in double quick time, we are used to shopping and the super quick speed of the Tesco employees, whom I have to say I have sorely missed over the last few years, never take for granted your local checkout workers, having been in different countries where sitting on your mobile phone is the done thing at your work station, I never take Tesco peeps for granted (other supermarkets are available), said work station can have a dozen or more people waiting to be served but that mobile still needs checking, answering and best not forget to check your facebook.....

The food in the supermarkets was brilliant and the variety of stock pretty impressive, well apart from my Thai 7 spices which I'm having flown in via a man from Maud, funnily enough Bahrain didn't have 7 spice either.

Since arriving in Saudi the weather has been horrendously cold, we were only three degrees higher than Lou Lou's, and we have no heating having left our little fire in Cyprus, so we had to go out and buy another, this one will be coming with us where ever we move to next... 

I have gotten to grips with the house and organising all our belongings where I want them, hanging pictures and trying to dry clothes without using the tumble dryer, quite a feet in a house with no heat and when the sun does shine it almost laughs at you as if to say 'heat really!!'

Stitch and I have been getting acquainted with the youngsters and mothers in the compound, and I am now on the Whatsapp list for the Ladies on the compound, which amazingly appears quite a long list, so I could be meeting up with the locals very soon. Stitch I think is going to be King of the Compound, the mothers love him, the kids want to play with him, but I am not sure how he will get on once he figures out that smell that has been driving him mad on our walks is in fact two cats that live over the back of us, it could go either way.

Queenie is laid up just now having broken and impacted her wrist, had it reset twice, fallen down the stairs because her pain meds made her extremely dizzy and had her stomach lining trashed by the anti-inflammatories, so much bad luck for one person, I always said she should be wrapped in cotton wool I just always thought she would grow out of it....

These were so bid they would make a tower sized S'more

Spaghetti Squash yaaa but £6.00 a pop I don't think so

Now that's how you dress up an Abaya 

Arriving

So we left Bahrain and headed for the causeway, it really is a magnificent structure but unfortunately the weather was not the greatest for seeing way off into the distance but I made the most of it, just as we reached the causeway I remembered my tent and quickly threw it over my head, and began taking photos of our journey.  Luckily we had a very uneventful journey, and having learned at the very tender age of 18 how best to use your elbows when confronted with people who have no idea about queuing I was seen right away at the customs/immigration department on the causeway, this entailed photos and fingerprints. I was most disappointed that no ink was used in the process, it's all about scanning these days, I was hoping to be covered in war paint for at least a few days, you know so I could stick my fingers up at any passing strangers and say 'oh yeah, I been fingerprinted.....'

We carried on our journey and finally entered Khobar, travelled past the mall which I'm sure will become very familiar to me in the next few years, and finally arrived at our new home, Al Mohamadia compound which is situated very close to the sea and apparently on a clear day I will have a good view of the causeway off in the distance, but not today.

I snuck in the house and my beloved let Stitch out of his living area and I was so happy to see him, and he was delighted to see me too, he was jumping around like a dog with two tails, on my lap, off my lap, around and around, and then we took him for a tour of the compound and a pee stop, obviously for him not me, I use indoor toilets you know.

Our first evening in Saudi Arabia was spent in Dhahram mall, we wandered around trying to find a sim card for my phone and then took our supper at a brilliant Chinese restaurant which fortunately didn't stop for evening prayers, because I was starving by this time.

I have noticed that as they drive so do they walk, some not all Saudi's have a complete disregard for others in their way, so needless to say a couple of Saudi's felt my handbag last night after they tried to walk though instead of round my beloved, if you carry it just at the right height and remember I'm short it can quite easily incapacitate a gentleman who has a complete lack of his own space control whilst walking.  All in all our first night in Saudi together was pretty darned good.