Friday, April 9, 2010

What Hath March Wrought?


The answer to the title question, to be brief, is "not much".  I have found myself working long hours and some weekends with a never-ending supply of things to be done.  My personal responsibilities revolve around storage systems, filesystems, backup, and archive.  These all come with their own set of unique requirements, skills, and activities.  Making this stuff available to a community of highly educated researchers requires delving into operating systems, security, policy, procedure, politics, etc. etc..  Having only recently seen some significant utilization on our first compute cluster, we are adding another which is to be operational within a couple of weeks.  I note all this by way of an apology for not being more diligent in my blogging.

I have made a couple of journeys to Jeddah to do some shopping.  There are many "things" I would like to purchase but can't bring myself to do so.  I've looked at vacuum cleaners, ink jet printers, speakers, stereos and the like but I keep asking myself questions like "Do I really need that?" and "What will I do with it when I leave?" and "You came here to save money, remember?".  As a result I have managed to keep my spending to a minimum.

Two of my teammates have acquired vehicles, however.  One purchased a LandRover LE and another a Jaguar XJ.  Both are used but very low milage and in excellent condition.  My buddy from Finland bought the Jag.  The price was close to what a used Jag would cost in the States but 10K-20K Euros less than it would cost in Finland.  His plan is to drive it here for a few years and then take it to Finland and sell it for what he paid for it. 

 The Finnish Jag owner, Olli, is on the left in this photo.  Another teammate, Rashid, is on the right.   Rashid lived in Michigan before coming to KAUST and is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his family next month.   This photo was taken at the "Auto Mall" during evening prayer while we waited for the dealerships to re-open.  There are 10-15 dealers arranged in a semicircular fashion over a city block.  They include everything from Jag to Chevy to boat dealers to used car dealers.  One shop specializes in used Ford Crown Victorias straight from the U.S.   It makes one wonder just what experiences those cars have had on their journey.

  A car is another thing that would be nice just to be able to leave the campus when I wanted.  However, there aren't many places to go, drivers in Saudi Arabia are entirely nuts, and I came here to save money, remember?  I did make a change however.  I traded in one scooter for another.  The first one always felt like it was going to simply disassemble itself with me riding it leaving me skidding down the road on my posterior at 30kph.

This is my new ride.  Simple, slow, but entirely adequate for the grocery store and the golf course.

The KAUST campus is slowly growing......well not really growing but more of it is opening.  In the picture below you can see how little is actually opened compared to what will eventually be occupied.


The areas covered in the brown color are all housing.  The KAUST population is expected to be several thousand eventually which should attract many more shops and activities of all sorts.  The purple line outlines what's currently occupied.  Housing makes up a fairly small part of that.

The "Just Opened" bubble refers to the removal of fencing around the boat harbor area.  It's not actually complete but at least we can access it.  As in many things Saudi, art is a major component.









On the left is a wall of the marina building.  The mural is made entirely of tiles.  On the right is a closeup of part of the wall where you can see the tiles.  This boat is on the lower right of the larger photo on the left.


Jeddah is quite famous for the amount of public art that can be found in roundabouts and along the Corniche which is a road that runs along the Red Sea.  If you are interested, "Susie's Big Adventure" is an amazing blogger who has many photos of sculptures around Jeddah.  See Sculputures of Jeddah.
If you are interested in a much broader view of Saudi Arabia and Jeddah than I can provide, check out her blog at http://susiesbigadventure.blogspot.com/.





 The view on the left is of some of the landscaping at the Marina.  The Boat Harbor is just to the left of this photo. (see below)



I don't know for sure but I believe the boat in the picture belongs to KAUST and is used for taking visiting bigwigs out to the reefs that are the focus of much research at KAUST.  I'm confident this is a close as I will ever get to that boat.


















Above is the marina building from the water side.  The KAUST "beacon" is on the left and is located right across from the marina.  It's still under construction but we will eventually be able to walk out to it.  In the campus picture above where I showed what was open, the red pin points to the beacon.  The picture below give you an idea of its scale.  That's a 6-8' ladder leaning against it.




Lastly, after only two months and a bit, I have business cards!  English on one side; Arabic on the other.  I don't really know what I'll use them for but they sure are pretty :-)