I present a flight voucher from KSU for a ticket to Canberra, I explain that I want to fly to Melbourne instead, travel agent spends 30 minutes trying to determine if a flight to Melbourne will be cheaper (it is), I present a list of the dates and times I specifically want to fly, travel agent books with the right carrier but wrong times, I insist that flights be changed to the ones I want, travel agent expresses concern with long stopover in Dubai, I explain the advantages of direct flights to Melbourne as opposed to stopovers in Asia, travel agent sits in confused silence but eventually relents to my demands.

This went fairly smoothly but in order to complete the booking I had to go and see a man in the main building for authorisation of the purchase. I went to the area where I was told the man would be located and asked the first person I saw if he could assist me in finding him. This man took my paperwork and started working on it, printing out new papers, stamping and signing things for the next 10 minutes until he finally handed back my papers and informed me that the man I needed was not here right now and would be arriving in about two, or maybe three, hours. Having no desire to wait around, I decided my best bet was to come back the next day when they opened.

The next morning I arrived early and sat waiting for the man arrive. Half an hour later and the man I need to speak to has not arrived so the man I spoke to the day before decides to send me over to another person to get the approval. That man isn’t in his office either so I get directed to the ticket office, where I hand over my forms to another man to look at. He taps away at his computer for 10 minutes and proceeds to explain to me in a very thick accent something about refunds. Alarmed, I ask whether my ticket has been booked and he again tries to give me some spiel about KSU and refunds and ticket prices, which makes absolutely no sense. He passes me another sheet of paper, labelled as a refund request, and sends me over to the refund counter. Confused and rather concerned I head to the refund counter and pass over the paperwork I have been given. He signs it, and then I sign it, and then he asks me to pay him 15 SR. I lose my temper.

Fortunately, the refunds desk was located right next to the supervisor’s office so my ranting and raving was quickly attended to by the manager on duty. He invited me into his office where he looked up my details and provided me with an explanation of what was going on. For some reason the booking I had made the day before had been cancelled and the thickly accented man had re-booked my flight for me. The price of the flight had come in at 4715 SR, 15 SR over a previously undisclosed price limit for my flight and therefore, I was required to pay the difference. Since I was never informed about a limit for a “complimentary” flight, I continued to rant and rave about being forced to pay extra until the excess charge miraculously disappeared off my bill. My ticket was promptly re-issued (proceeding through the standard booking process I mentioned above) and the supervisor ensured everything was in order so I could finally leave with a valid ticket home to Australia. I had decided it would be wise to delay my departure until mid-September to ensure that I would not have to stress about my impending flight if there was some reason for a delay in my clearance being approved. As it turned out, I did need all that extra time.

All that was remaining for my exit visa paperwork was the letter from the university stating the end date of my contract. I visited the ladies’ section of the KSU administration building and was told that I should have received this paperwork from the College of Medicine. After explaining that while my contract is through the college I have no other contact with them I was asked to wait while some calls were made and the paperwork was faxed over to me. Finally I was ready to submit all the documents for my visa.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. Clearance – Part 3
2. Clearance – Part 2
3. Clearance – Part 1

Upon arriving at the men’s section I was met by the security guards who quickly tried to send me back to the ladies’ section, thinking I must have made some major error in my navigation there. After a few minutes of broken Arabic and a lot of gesturing at the Arabic words on my forms, one of the guards decided to take it in for me while the other guard offered me a chair to sit in. He pushed it out the door and into the entrance hall to the building. Then he pushed it a little further, while gesturing at me to keep pushing until I was a safe distance away. This seemed to work to my advantage because the security guards were so concerned about getting me away from the building that they did not waste any time completing the task I had left to them. To my relief, I got the signature, which allowed me to get the remaining ones from the ladies’ section and was told my clearance was complete. All I needed now was my plane ticket (paid for by a voucher from the university) and my final exit visa. By now it was mid-August and Eid al-Fitr was just over a week away. I thought I was likely to be done by the first week of September, after Eid vacation (a week-long public holiday), but I was very wrong.

My next task was to apply for my exit visa, the procedure for which no one except the head of the KAUH passport office knew about (or at least no one else was prepared to explain to me). This was a problem because he had taken vacation until the middle of Ramadan. Fortunately, by the time he had returned to work I had completed my clearance paperwork and I needed to know what other documents were required to apply for the visa. I also wanted to know the length of time I had between getting the visa and leaving the country so that I could book my flight back to Australia.

After a number of unsuccessful visits to the passport office, I finally managed to arrive at a time when the head of the passport office was there (which, as I mentioned previously, can be very difficult during the month of Ramadan) and he happily answered all of my questions until I was able to fully comprehend the procedure. This may have seemed silly of me but I was well aware that often details important to me were considered to be unimportant to the person I was speaking to because they considered it common knowledge (ie, that I needed clearance paperwork in the first place). In fact the man I was speaking with appeared quite surprised that no one else had explained the exit visa requirements to me already. This was a pretty common occurrence throughout the whole time I was trying to get my clearance and I was often met with looks of surprise when I asked for more information or clearer instructions.

So now I knew what I needed to submit my exit visa application.

1. My completed clearance paperwork,
2. A letter from KSU administration explaining that I was ending my contract and the end date of my contract,
3. My plane ticket,
4. Two photos,
5. My passport and,
6. My iqama.

I was also advised that the exit visa would have a validity of 30 days from its issuing date for me to leave the country (as it turned out I was given a rather generous 60 days) and that I should plan to allow 10 days for my visa to be processed once I submit the documents (which was subsequently reduced to 3 days. It pays to be on good terms with the passport office). With this knowledge on hand I made plans to visit the travel agency to redeem my flight voucher for my plane ticket home.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. Clearance – Part 1
2. Clearance – Part 4
3. Clearance – Part 2

I had one very important signature to procure outside of KSU and that was clearance from my bank. The person who gave me my forms told me to work on getting this signature first because it would take some time to complete. I didn’t quite understand the significance of the advice I was given and instead left it until fairly late. In hindsight I do see why the advice was given because it did take about a week to complete and involved quite a bit of running around.

Getting clearance from the bank seemed fairly simple, as there was a bank branch in the hospital.  I visited one afternoon and showed the teller my paperwork but he informed me that he was unable to do it because he was not a manager.  He suggested that I visit the bank branch next door and ask to speak with the manager there. When I tried there the man I spoke to said he couldn’t help me and urged me to go to the customer service branch on “Al-Farzdaq Street“, which seemed to be a perfectly reasonable request to him as he knew where it was and perfectly unreasonable to me as I had no idea of the location of said street. Since he offered no further explanation I requested to see the bank manager who stared in confused silence at my paperwork before getting up and asking around what to do with me.

After a few minutes, he came back and informed me that I could start the application for clearance with one of the tellers and would only have to find the customer service branch when it was completed. The reluctant teller, who had tried to persuade me otherwise, took all my details and informed me that it would probably take around 10 days to complete the request, less time if I had no loans or credit cards. Fortunately for me it was only five days later that the bank notified me that my clearance request was complete (by SMS, which was very convenient) and I had to pick up my paperwork from them at the Al-Farzdaq office. I found the mysterious branch by getting into a taxi at the hospital and asking the driver to take me there. He knew where it was because it was only two blocks away, which probably explained the previous teller’s confusion at my inability to understand its location. I defend myself here with the fact that I never drive so I have no reason to even know most street names unless they were necessary navigational aides to getting to a preferred location (this street not being one of them). Of course, upon arriving at the unmarked bank building that housed the customer service branch, I was told that the system was down (a very common occurrence in Saudi). I had no intention of leaving empty handed so I waited for the teller to fix the problem and print out and sign another piece of paper to go with my growing pile of clearance sheets. Paperwork in hand, I walked the two blocks back to the hospital and set about acquiring my final set of signatures, which were mainly from the university administration.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. Clearance – Part 3
2. Clearance – Part 4
3. Clearance – Part 1

The exit visa procedure isn’t written about often and remains somewhat of mystery to those having to undertake it. In fact, I found that even the people who were meant to be administering my clearance papers were not entirely sure what they were meant to be doing with them (or at least they gave me that impression). I’d say one reason for the lack of discussion on clearance is that most people have no desire to relive the trauma they experienced, therefore, not many articles can be found about it online. Also, it seems that even within the same institution the clearance procedure can play out completely differently for two people, even if they resigned at the same time. For example, my colleague and myself, she’s married and I’m not, which constitutes a big difference here. Nevertheless, I wanted to document my experience for anyone curious about what can actually happen during clearance.

To begin with, there are two steps to leaving the country after you resign from your position:

1. Your employer “clears” you of having any outstanding debts that you need to pay off before leaving.
2. Applying for and receiving your exit visa.

The first, and lengthiest, step involved acquiring signatures from 20 people, most of whom I have never met before.

The contractual period of employment at KSU is based around the academic year, which starts and ends in September, right at the end of summer and currently at the end of the month of Ramadan. This poses a number of problems for someone trying to find and collect signatures because almost anyone in their right mind will take at least some of their vacation during the summer months and for those who haven’t, the working hours of Ramadan are reduced to, at the very most, five hours a day. It is a requirement that the employee notify the university of their resignation at least two months before the end of their current contract, which means sometime before July (the months are actually counted in the Hijri calendar but I went by Gregorian to be safe). Therefore, the entire period from giving notice through to ending your contract is not only oppressively hot but it is also highly likely that the people you need to see are not around when you come looking for them.

My first challenge was picking up the required clearance forms. It wasn’t until I questioned one of the ladies in the administration section for a third time about my final exit procedure that she casually mentioned that I needed to provide completed clearance forms to apply for my exit visa. The previous times I had asked her if there was any further paperwork for me to do she had confidently told me that everything was complete. This is not an unusual practice because it wasn’t her responsibility to provide me with the clearance paperwork, therefore, as far as she was concerned, she had no reason to discuss it with me. I tend to disagree. She explained to me that because I was officially employed by the College of Medicine I had to see someone there to pick up the forms.

It was mid-July when I finally got this information so of course this meant that the person I was directed to see was on vacation. A rather kind secretary in the office across the hall informed me of this and sent me to find “Mohammed” instead. Now, if you’ve ever set foot in a Muslim country you will realise just how complexing a task like that can be. After bouncing around a few offices with a confused and helpless look on my face (this was to become the norm) I ended up being handed two forms that needed to be completed. The first one had a College of Medicine header and a list of departments requiring signatures. The other was a very similar form except that it had a KKUH header, which I was told to use in my place of employment, KAUH, and was to become a source of much confusion to everyone in the coming weeks.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. Clearance – Part 3
2. Clearance – Part 2
3. Clearance – Part 4

The times have changed since I started this blog almost 3 years ago. A tired old blog only served to provide me with tired old feelings about writing in it. I decided it was time to move into the future of blog design and here we are now. I hope you enjoy the new, more modern, layout.

I appreciate everyone’s feedback on the new site, especially if something isn’t working right. I can’t test every platform and web browser software out there. If you have something you’d like to say hit me up on the new contact page or leave a comment on this post. Affirmations of my design ability will also be happily received.

If you’re lost and don’t know where to go from here, click on the blog link in the menu bar up top to get a full list of my published posts.

For those with RSS feeds, you should be automatically transferred over the new new address. Let me know if you have any problems.

Looking forward to writing more for you.

Stacy.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. End of year musings.

In the meantime, I’m actually days away from stepping onto another plane and flying over to Argentina. From here I plan to travel all the way down to Antarctica, along with some extra time spent in Argentina and Brazil. You can follow my adventure at Stacy in Antarctica if you are interested. I promise many photos of penguins and icebergs in the coming weeks. For those who don’t like penguins and icebergs (surely there can’t be many), there will also be photos of South America in the first and last weeks, including a magnificent waterfall that makes Niagara look like a mountain stream (or so I’m told). Either way, I think it will be worth a read.

I’m also working on a new blog layout that I plan to release in the new year. I’m excited about it and I’ll let you know more when its ready. For now, just enjoy the new header I put up while I was mucking around. For a bit of context, the photo was taken during a rather aggressive sand storm I found myself in while camping just outside of Riyadh. The photo hasn’t been edited in any way. I promise to tell the story one day.

While I am dishing out news, I just happen to be catching up with two of my bestest Saudi friends, A and D, this weekend! We all left at different times over the past 2 years so I can’t wait to hear what they’ve been up to. I’m sure their stories will help me write about what it is like to return home after a few years abroad and what is defined as ‘reverse culture shock’.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. More Washington DC and heading home.

Living in housing compounds where I am the only Western woman has given me a greater appreciation for a sense of community and an understanding of why people who immigrate to countries like Australia tend to move to communities of people who have similar cultures to their own. Culture shock and lifestyle changes can really make you desire for the presence of others who understand what you are going through so you can feel like you are not alone in your suffering. Plenty of people write about how enriching it can be to immerse oneself in the local customs and culture of your host country, and they’re right, but sometimes there is nothing more comforting than to know that your experiences and feelings are not unique.

That’s not to say that the past two years I have been in Saudi Arabia have been mired by pain and suffering. I have had some amazing experiences while I have been living here. I have experienced a culture so completely foreign from my own, seen ancient ruins, travelled to the USA and Europe, met such a diverse range of people from all walks of life and made friends from places all over the world. However, there are also times when I have felt lost and hopeless and totally alone. But there’s always that desire to pick yourself up and make things right again. To know that I have faced some very challenging times and have fought my way through is a testament to that. They say that in the course of life it is the bad times that really highlight the good and I believe that is true.

I have been asked plenty of times by a sympathetic Saudi if I hate it here and I honestly don’t. Sure, there are plenty of obvious reasons not to enjoy living here but there are also a lot of things that I will miss (I’ll even write them down one day so you know). Probably the biggest disruption to my lifestyle here was the inability to create a routine. I don’t cope well in chaos and no matter how hard I tried there was always something to disrupt my efforts at maintaining a predictable schedule. What it has taught me, however, is that there’s always a way out and an answer to the problem, even if you don’t see it straight away. I haven’t failed. I just know that the time is right to move onto the next challenge that life brings me.

I still intend to write about my experiences in Saudi Arabia. There are so many interesting stories I have left to tell. I know I have hardly written anything at all this year and I hope to make up for some of that lost time when I return to Australia. For now I am trying to complete my clearance so I can exit the country and boy will that be a story to tell!

The Al Jazeera news report in English provides a good summary of the story.

Unfortunately, she was very quickly picked up by the police and questioned, however, they face a difficult task as the authorities don’t seem to know what to do with her and what exact laws she has broken. It seems that while there are numerous fatwas issued against women driving, the legal side of the story is not as clear. A fairly concise list of the reasons given by the religious clerics for women not being able to drive is presented on Saudiwoman’s Weblog.

Interestingly, a number of other reports have come out at the same time about women taking control of their own transport:
Woman driver surprised by society’s reaction
Saudi woman caught driving in Qassim

Even King Abdullah said in 2005, in an interview with Barbara Walters,

“I believe strongly in the rights of women,” the king said during his first television interview since acceding to the Saudi throne on Aug. 1. “I believe the day will come when women drive. In time, I believe it will be possible. And I believe patience is a virtue.”

Personally, relying on a driver to get anywhere in the city is a nuisance for many reasons. If you want your specific driver to pick you up and take you somewhere you need to plan and book the driver at least 30 minutes in advance to allow for time for them to get to you. As I don’t necessarily plan the exact time that I finish work this means that hailing one of the city’s numerous taxis is more convenient. The lack of real addresses here means that having the driver actually know where you want to go can be somewhat tricky. Many times I have gotten into a taxi with the assurance of the driver that he knows where I want to go, only to be asked half way through the trip for exact directions to my location. Since I don’t drive, speak very little Arabic and have no idea what the street names are this can turn into a very frustrating task. It also means that if you see a shop you would like to visit that isn’t near a major landmark (ie, a mall, supermarket, major road) it is basically too much effort to try and get there again.

Other times I have booked a driver only to have them turn up at the wrong place to pick me up or drive me in the wrong direction because they weren’t listening when I told them where I want to go. This makes the whole effort of getting to the shops an undesirable task and definitely not something I wish to do just to pick up a litre of milk. Instead, most women seem to try and do their shopping in bulk at a place where they can tick off a number of tasks at the one time to avoid unnecessary trips.

As to the horrific state of the traffic on the road, I believe that Saudi women could disprove the old belief that ‘women can’t drive’ by injecting some order into the chaos that fills the roads in Riyadh. Especially if it means sacking the millions of foreign drivers we need to get around. I can only hope that there are more brave women who will stand up and say that the ban on women driving is insane and publicly push for change. This is an argument that has been going on in the country for far too long.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. Driving, Saudi style.
2. A Saudi Arabian wedding celebration.
3. Saudi culture: An Australian perspective.

So far Saudi Arabia has been isolated from these protests. However, two weeks ago King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz returned to Saudi Arabia (after a three month medical hiatus) to much fanfare, announcing a number of social and financial initiatives for the people and awarding government workers and schools with a day off in celebration. Not surprisingly, it was perfectly timed to ensure that the citizens of Saudi Arabia were fully aware of their leader’s generosity towards his people. As to whether this method was successful, time will ultimately tell. Its no secret that there are Saudis who are not happy with the state of affairs in the country, especially focusing on the rights of women, freedom of expression, unemployment, corruption in government departments and wealth distribution.

There are now murmurings of young Saudis organising a day of protest on March 11th (this Friday) and a ‘day of revolution’ on March 20th. Of course, while announcing the date of protest well in advance is intended to gather supporters for the cause, it also means that the authorities have plenty of time to prepare for any incidents. This week the Interior Ministry have reiterated that demonstrations are banned in Saudi Arabia for religious and cultural reasons. However, protesting was banned in many other Middle Eastern countries and that definitely hasn’t stopped them. One interesting difference here is that the King has his own personal army (the Saudi Arabian National Guard) to protect against a possible attempt to dethrone him, including a military coup. How this will affect an uprising here is anyone’s guess and not a scene I hope will play out.

So how does this affect me? Well for the time being it is business as usual. I think I’ll stay off the streets on Friday and see what happens. I get the general feeling that most people here are happy with the King (though there are consequences to publicly stating otherwise) but I don’t know what’s really said behind closed doors.

One thing I can say for certain is that I have my passport and the address of the Australian Embassy on hand just in case…

You might also be interested in reading:

1. Where is Riyadh?
2. The A-word.
3. Saudi culture: An Australian perspective.

I won’t speculate on the number of cranes in the city (I have heard estimates of up to 50% of the cranes in the world, though I am dubious of such a high number) but I can see three when I look out the kitchen window in my apartment at the university. If you imagine that most people living in the city can probably see at least two cranes when they look out their windows then you might understand how universal these pieces of equipment are here. One of the problems with such ubiquitous construction is that as a resident of Riyadh I am constantly finding myself in the midst of a construction site. For instance, King Saud University has been staging a massive expansion of the university facilities, most notably their two hospitals. As my housing is located behind at the university the only way for me to get to the main road to catch a taxi to work is to walk directly through the hospital construction site. This has caused an interesting conundrum for me as during my upbringing in Australia I was taught unequivocally never to set foot into a construction site without first needing to be there and secondly upholding the strict occupational health and safety (OH&S;) regulations required for entry to that site.

Now I have been known to have a whinge from time to time about what sometimes seems like OH&S; gone mad in the Australian workplace. Sometimes it feels akin to baby-proofing a house, yet we’re all adults and know that you’re not meant to run with scissors or touch the hot stove top. Sure, there’s always a good reason… in the event a cataclysmic tidal wave it just may be that electrical cable on the floor under your desk that’ll be your undoing. Then you’ll be wishing you’d tied that cable up the to back of your desk… right? Anyway, now that I’m in Riyadh, where safety sometimes factors a little lower on the list than we’re used to in Australia I’ve found myself turning into the clip board carrying safety officer I’ve always despised. That bundle of cables lying across the floor in a common walking space strikes an sudden fear into my heart that those around me are not so familiar with. In reality the worst that could probably happen is someone would accidentally unplug a computer and incite the wrath of a colleague who hadn’t bothered to save the document they were working on. Hardly the cataclysmic scenario of death and destruction that’s been drummed into us for such a long time while we were growing up.

That’s not to say that OH&S; doesn’t have its place in society. It surprises me that maybe one in five people on a construction site here can be seen wearing hard hats, people dig up roads with jack hammers without wearing eye or hearing protection and if there’s a construction site in your way, be it a building site or a torn up sidewalk, then sometimes your only real option is to take your safety into your own hands and power on through. Most people in Riyadh can attest that its almost impossible to walk a city block without having to at least once navigate around a construction site. I don’t know how many serious injuries or lives could be saved from a higher level of safety but I imagine that a number would. Unfortunately, most of the lives lost are probably foreign workers who’s family are back in their country of origin so don’t have a very loud voice against these problems.

One thing I’ve found to be quite fascinating is the sheer speed and volume of construction that takes place here. One day you’ll be driving down the street and a building that was there yesterday will have been transformed into a pile of rubble, the next day all that will remain is a gaping hole in the ground. Six months later the skeleton of a new building will have replaced the old one. New malls open, hospitals and educational facilities are springing up in every corner of the city. My own hospital is building a whole new facility which was foundations when I started here and now towers six stories into the sky. Its a wonder that the city has the population to support such a number of new facilities.

People who were in Riyadh in the 1980s have amazing stories to tell about the size of the city at that time. Areas that we now consider inner-city were at that time the city limits. In the next 20 years who knows how big this city will become, but anyone living here will know for a fact that construction doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. The soundtrack to your life.
2. An abundance of free time.
3. Where is Riyadh?