Saudi Oger gives me an answer!

As you may, or may not, know, I have been trying to get work here on campus for quite a while. So far, I have been talking to Saudi Oger, which appears to have been a mistake. About three and a half months ago I went in to start my training for the position of Lab Coordinator. Everyone assured me that I would have a contract worked out within a week or two. I worked/trained for three days before I decided that I would rather have a contract before putting in nine hours a day, six days a week.

I submitted my application on the second day of work/training, so I figured I would only have to wait a week for my offer. I ended up waiting two months to get the offer, and that was with me calling at least once a week, often more like once a day, to push things along. When they finally sent me an offer it was for 12 months of work at about $7.50 per hour. While the pay rate would have been insulting anyways, I simply couldn't work for 12 months. I could have if they had gotten me an offer in a timely manner, but not after so much delay. I sent back my comments, and waited some more. And I called and I called. Now, more than a month later, I have an answer! They said that it was just not worth it to hire a person for eight months, especially since it would take them another month or two to work out the details, and by that time I would only be able to work six or seven months.

Needless to say, it has not been a good experience. I have another company that I am going to start trying to get work with now, and hopefully, as they are run out of the United States, they won't have the same issues as Saudi Oger.

I should say that I am not totally surprised by this whole ordeal with Saudi Oger. We have disappointing experiences such as this almost continuously here in Saudi Arabia, and it seems to be mostly just a cultural difference. It seem to be a difference between individuals taking responsibly for their own work and not having to be badgered to get things done. It isn't completely their fault, the flow of business here just seems to go much more slowly; no one seems to mind if things never get done.

Athens: Day 5

This was definitely a great day on our visit.  We started with a walk to and then through the National Gardens.  It had started to drizzle a bit, but at this point, it wasn't bad enough to deter us from our plans.  The garden was really quite beautiful, lots of winding paths and a wide variety of trees and plants.  They even had a little Christmas village set up in the middle of the garden where they played festive music and kids could visit Santa.  We actually ended up finding a second Christmas village later in the week, and got some cute pictures there.

Our next stop was to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where they do a weekly changing of the Evzones guards.  They had a parade with a band and the soldiers.

Band playing in the streets of Athens.

Guards marching in the parade.

Check out those awesome pom-pom clogs.  They had amazing costumes (uniforms?)!  The guards were very impressive, and they were all huge.  Apparently the height requirement to be a Evzone guard is 6' 1" which I'm sure only increases their formidability. 

Loved the tights too!

The back of the costume was intricate too!  They did a really interesting high step foot slap going on.  You can hear it really well in the video at the end.

Guard on duty.

By the time we got to the guard changing ceremony, it was pouring.  We ended up buying umbrellas, which did end up getting a fair amount of use during the trip.

After the Guard changing ceremony, it was absolutely pouring.  So we hopped on the metro and headed to our next two stops: the National Archaeological Museum and the Epigraphical Museum.

The NAM was having a free admission day, however, a considerable portion of the museum was closed.  I'm pretty sure that this was due to lack of money, as it wasn't the first museum we encountered with this problem.  Sadly, the Antikythera mechanism was in one of the closed wings, so Steve was incredibly disappointed by this.  They did have many of the statues from the Anikythera shipwreck, and it was kind of cool to see the affect of the ocean on the statues.  Unfortunately, photos weren't allowed.

After touring the museum, we had the most delicious hot chocolate in the museum cafe.  I'm pretty sure it was made entirely with whole milk, so while delicious, it was quite rich.  This museum also had awkward bathrooms.  I'm not sure if it's due to theft or culture, but almost all of the toilets in Athens were missing the actual toilet seat.  Needless to say, I got pretty good at balancing.

Our next stop was hard not too hard to find, but certainly hard to get into.  We had to ring the doorbell of the Epigraphical Museum to have someone let us in, because it didn't look open.  This was a cool little forgotten museum and we kind of felt bad for it.  The lady working had to go into each room and turn the lights on ahead of us.  The whole museum is filled with tablets, steales, and other stone chiseled writings.  The signs in the museum were all in Greek, but it was still fun to look at all the tablets.

After this, the weather had dried up, but we were still pretty damp, so we headed back to the hostel.

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Catch up on the rest of our adventure:

Athens Day 1 

Traveling Back to Saudi Arabia 

Small Math Problems and 4 Modes of Transportation 

Restoring Faith in Traveling 

Playing the Ethics Card 

Changing Perspectives on Cash v. Debit

Athens: Day 2

Roommate Antics

Athens: Day 3 Part 1

Athens: Day 3 Part 2

Athens: Day 4

Athens: Day 4

On our fourth day in Athens we went for a hike in the area around the Pnyx and the Philoppapos monument. This area appears to have many names: the hill of the muses, the hill of the nymphs, Philopappos hill, or the Mouseion hill. These may be different hills all next to each other, I can't be sure. Whatever you call it, it is beautiful. There were tons of trails around the hills, from asphalt to cobblestone to gravel and dirt. The only thing that kept it from being a maze was a good slope, and amazing views of the Acropolis and the sea to give us a sense of direction.

The Acropolis. The hills we were hiking in were only about 1 km from the Acropolis. Many statues were found in the rubble used to fill in behind the built up walls around the Acropolis.

There was a bit of haze in the air, leading to beautiful colors.

The Acropolis with Lycavitos hill (Mount Lycabettus) behind it.

There seems to be a huge variety of spellings for most of the places and things in Greece. I would guess that some of this comes from the fact that some of their letters look like Roman letters,but make a different sound, like eta and "H".

The sun on the sea.

Philopappos Monument.

There is almost nothing left of this, and some of it was even thought to have been taken for use in building the Parthenon minaret.  How many of you knew that the Parthenon had also been a church and a mosque? We sure didn't!

The hiking was very easy over the gentle, rocky hills. We found the whole place enchanting. It looked a lot like what I imagine Ireland looks like, with patches of bare stone poking through the brilliant emerald foliage.

Such a beautiful place.

Steve in Athens.

When we were near the observatory we starting hearing huge booms. We saw flashes and smoke rising from Lykavitos hill, and heard the booms about seven seconds later. There were about ten rapports in total, maybe 30 seconds apart. We still  have no idea what it was all about.  Since it was New Years Day, it might have been part of some city celebration, but the internet failed us.

Smoke rising near Lykavitos hill.

The Acropolis. 

The Acropolis from the Pnyx.

We passed Socrates' Prison on the way  back, but it was too dark for pictures. Don't worry: we went back later in better light. Like most days in Athens, we had dinner at a little cafe, and had gelato.

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Catch up on the rest of our Greek adventure:

Athens Day 1

Traveling Back to Saudi Arabia

Small Math Problems and 4 Modes of Transportation

Restoring Faith in Traveling

Playing the Ethics Card

Changing Perspectives on Cash v. Debit

Athens: Day 2

Roommate Antics

Athens: Day 3 Part 1

Athens: Day 3 Part 2

Athens: Day 3 Part 2

This day was broken into two parts because there were just a ton of great pictures. Besides the sites on the Acropolis, it is a really good place to look down onto the other sites.

The south-eastern corner of the Parthenon.

 

Looking down at what I think was a temple to the god Asclepius.

The Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus. Notice the metal rail used to move blocks around during the restoration.

   

The new Acropolis Museum.  The entire top floor showcases copies and original friezes of the Parthenon.

 

Some suave gent. It was quite chilly, so I usually wore a t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, and my sweater.

 

A view looking towards Lycavittos Hill.

 

The Temple of Zeus. Notice the drum construction made obvious on the fallen column.  The column actually fell during a big storm in the 1800s and they decided to preserve it as it fell.

 

View of the Temple of Hephaistos.  Abby really enjoyed taking pictures of this from above.

When we had done a complete circuit of the Acropolis we descended again and walked around to the north slope of the Acropolis. There are numerous sites of interest around the base of the rock. There was a well and a few caves, and places where ancient roads or walls were slightly visible. It was very peaceful, Abby and I were practically alone, except for the occasional stray dog.

Abby in front of one of the big caves on the Acropolis Hill.

Another great view looking over the city.

The Areopagus (the big rock) was an important gathering area in ancient times as well at the location of the court where they tried criminals. Now, it's popular climbing location for tourists.  We walked all the way around to the west end again, and from there walked past the Odeon on our way back to the hostel.

 

In front of the Odeon of Herodus Atticus.

Some kind of Church. I really couldn't tell you which one, but it was pretty, so we snapped a picture.

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Catch up on the rest of our adventure:

Athens Day 1 

Traveling Back to Saudi Arabia 

Small Math Problems and 4 Modes of Transportation 

Restoring Faith in Traveling 

Playing the Ethics Card 

Changing Perspectives on Cash v. Debit 

Athens: Day 2

Roommate Antics

Athens: Day 3 Part 1

Freshberry Froyo vs. Baskin Robbins

Over the winter break, a new frozen yogurt shop opened on campus.  Steven and I checked out Frozen berry tonight on our way back from Maria Zuber's lecture about Mars.  The lecture was excellent, but the frozen yogurt was underwhelming.

They've got a huge number of toppings; 15 or so different dry toppings, which surprisingly includes Fruity Pebbles (my favorite cereal that I haven never seen for sale here in SA) and about 12 different wet toppings (mostly fresh fruits).

The prices though, are somewhat underwhelming.  The smallest froyo is 16 SAR ($4.25) with 2 toppings or 10 SAR ($2.66) with no toppings.  This seems to be similar to the Baskin Robbins (the ice cream shop on campus) regular size, which is 14 SAR ($3.75).  The largest size is 24 SAR a whopping $6.40 and is hugely over sized.  It's hard to believe the claim that froyo is part of a healthy lifestyle, when the servings are so large.  Sure, it might be fewer calories than ice cream, but it's a big stretch to call it healthy.

Sadly, the flavor was pretty bland.  I got vanilla froyo with Oreo and Reese Pieces toppings.  Steve got strawberry froyo with white chocolate and raspberry toppings.  The one redeeming quality was the decor.  It was super cute, colorful, and modern.  I'll probably go back just to take pictures, and the light fixtures were so fun!

One of the main reasons I wanted to try it is because I was hoping it would surpass Baskin Robbins as our go to treat location.  The ice cream is tasty and delicious, but they refuse to post an English menu, and have recently increased prices.  The primary excuse for the menu was a basic, duh it's Saudi Arabia from the guy working, but somehow, despite this fact every other dining or shopping establishment on campus has managed to put up English signs.

Sadly, froyo won't overtake Baskin Robbins as our go to treat location, but I'm not convinced that Baskin Robbins is worth returning to either.