On My Way to Jazan

Early morning in Riyadh, it is only 10 C and it’s still dark. So I get up, get dressed and make my way to the wonderful airport. This facility is a mess, no service and no flair at all. Jut concrete and people who don’t like to work there. Parked the car and checked in. On my way to the security check I discovered that I still had my heavy-duty pocketknife in one of the many pockets of my field gear pants. That is not a problem over here. The guy at the monitor is mere interested in a chat with his pal than in watching the monitor and see what is being brought on board. You get away with everything here. A sub-machine gun over the shoulder would raise some suspicion I guess. I stuck it into my backpack and no problem. Still the sound at the little detection frame would go of each time I go through. The other guy did not really care, he sent me back twice, made me take my shoes off, that’s what he is supposed to do in situations like this and then he let me through shrugging his shoulders. The obvious reason was two pens in my pen pocket on my left sleeve.
Anyhow I am waiting for my flight and the sun is coming out. All is well in Saudi Arabia, it is a different world after all and one cannot compare and should not.

Travel to Jizan

Tomorrow I will fly to Jizan, the most southwestern corner of the Kingdom. It's the springboard to the islands in the Red Sea. Let us see what is up there. The wx certainly will be much better than here in Riyadh.

Not enough time

When I started this site I thought I had enough time to post something on a regular basis. It turned out be a bit different. There are not enough hours in the day to do it all. Between all the other obligations I barely find time for some private things. When I am back home in the evening I normally take my time for a run on the treadmill and have dinner, after that I often am really worn out and tired. On top of this it was planned that I travel a lot through this country, that was not the case so far. A few trips to the north and one week at th east coast, other than that just here an Munich. Not that exciting. I hope that there will be a chance to what I had planned. We will see, there is always hope. Have a nice day and hang in there once in while I will have the time to post even some pictures again.

I have been distracted

Abu Dhabi is my current location. Long story, after only one night in Riyadh I had to fly to Abu Dhabi to do some work. Yas Island is where I am staying. Great place next to the Formula 1 race circuit. Tonight there is a Guns and Roses Concert and in front of the hotel they are pitching up the background and equipment for the next " Celebsrity Chef" shooting.
What a wonderul place this is, so close to where we are working and yet so far away. I will take more time off and visit the Emirates here.
Tonight I am flying back and next week back to Munich for a few days.

happy holidays for all of you

A little Detour

I thought I would be going to the East Coast on Sunday however, I am in Munich. The weather is miserable and there is only very little of my weekend left. How could this happen? Well on Tuesday my Line Manager grabbed me and asked me if I could fly to Munich and rework a bid for the company. No problem got a business ticket and on the plane that night only to learn that this bid was significantly messed up, it was written by a team of 20 people over several month and now we where three guys to re-work it. Mission impossible. I don't want to go into details but it's a nasty story. So I am stuck in snow covered Munich flying back on Monday and than I hope to join the team on Tuesday at the Arabian Gulf.

Enjoy the x-mas season, I will be working.

The Edge Of The World Tour

This was a 5 hour tour into the desert near Riyadh. The place is called the Edge of the World, And from there you really can't go anywhere but back. Breathtaking views and silence. No tourists and no garbage. You have to drive southwest from Riyadh towards Mekka and after you pass the Check Point on Route 40 you turn off to the north west and drive on dirt and gravel for 1 1/2 hours. All along the cliffs bordering the Acacia Valley. The valley is part of the old Darb al Hjaz. (Darb is the word for way or route) You can find lot's of Camel Trails which where build into the mountains to get the animals up the slopes and up the escarpment. It's at roughly 1000 meters of elevation and on a perfect day like today it was a wonderful tour. I hope there will be many more to come. You just want to take a backpack and a tent and track through this wonderful landscape.

It's confirmed now

We will start the big Site Survey on Saturday. It will bring us around the entire border of Saudi Arabia, this is exciting. I will fly and drive around to inspect the 4 teams we have on the ground. This will take until mid February and is quite an expedition to move everybody into the different locations. M y first trip will take me to the East Coast with short visits to Manama and Doha over the weekend.
We will have to skip x-mas and New Years as the customer expects us to make up for the lost time in the project, fair enough.
In between I am thankful to being invited to the German Embassy here in Riyadh for the weekly Wednesday bar evening. This is a nice closure of the week sipping a Weizenbier with nice people.
I will drive out on 10 December, so look out for a higher frequency of posts here.
If you are snowed in in Europe, be brave it will go away sooner or later. In the meantime we try to avoid sunburn at the pool.

Take care.