In Jeddah!

Dear friends,

This post is coming out from Jeddah! Gosh, it seems like yesterday that I was working here. I remembered my workplace, the site office and the people with whom I worked with.

The flight over was all right. I flew Saudi Airlines, which was markedly improved from my previous experiences. They showed 6 different movies on the tv screens, and I watched In Good Company. There was one Indian movie, as well as several arabic music and movie channels. It seemed ironic in the sense that there were few people who were in their state of pilgrimage, and then we had people, like me, who watched the tv! It was a full flight, and I did not eat the dinner (the beef was unchewable!) If there is one complaint I have, it was air hostess, for whom I had to ring the call button 10 times to ask her to get me water---which she never did! LOL!

The time at the immigration went by fast. All 18 counters were operating, and the officers were working fairly fast. I was so glad to see such a change. I think I have to come to Saudi airport from now on and not go to the International airport. However, in my line, there were two familes, one a group of 7 and the other a group of 6. Each family did not fill in the immigrartion card, and when they got to the counter, the officer asked them to fill the cards. I got very annoyed because the family were standing there and filling out the cards, when they could have clearly moved to one side. The second family also did this. I wanted to move to another line, but then the observing officer asks people to stick to their line! People in my line were more frustrated than I was!

My luggage was already off the belt when I got to the luggage claim. One of the porter had put my suitcase at the farthest end of the room, and it took me a while to find it! Thankfully, the x-ray machines were working, and they did not open my luggage. I had several movies as well as a whole case of music cds. They did not stop me and let me go through. I think I am definitely going to come through Saudi airport, and not international one.

I took my sister out shopping today to Hera Mall, and it was so amazing to see so many new developments. New malls and shops, new billboards, new signs, roads were better, traffic was better (after Dubai, traffic is better anywhere!) and I found it a lot of fun to drive here. Tomorrow, I am going out to Fuddruckers with my friends. Soon, I shall be blogging from here. I already had a lot of fun reading Arab News and Saudi Gazette today. There was an article on Saudi teachers holding sex education classes in Saudi school! Gosh, what progress we have made here!

I have loads of other things on my head which I want to write here, but will do so tomorrow!

(The internet connection is painfully slow here, so it takes a while for me to connect to the internet, and wait for each page to download!)

Signing off,

Mansur