Last Weekend before 1st "Vacation"

This was my last weekend before heading to Ireland for my first 'vacation'. Been rather lacadasial in keeping my blog updated this week. This posting will be on some of the things I have observed and noted while in Saudi Arabia.

Driving
- Driving in Saudi Arabia goes against almost every thing I learned about driving in the US. Although nearly everyone I know speeds to some extent, most of the time it is only 5-10 mph above. Here, it seems like it is a challenge to see if you can double the speed limit. In an effort to go that higher speed, the traffic lanes are strictly recommendations. I have seen people use both shoulders of the road to pass people or even make an extra lane between two others. The later is normally done at stop lights. It is really interesting to see someone in a mid-size or larger car attempt (and succeed most times) to 'creep' up to the front of the line at a stop light. Or even better yet, zoom to the front of the turn lane only to speed off at the light change to go straight. The other popular pasttime at stop lights is to make two or even three turning lanes out of one. This normally means people are piled two wide in the regular lane and someone at the front of the straight travel lane has decided to turn left also. I have even witnessed people making u-turns from the straight travel lane across two 'official' turn lanes. I am very glad that I am not required to drive in country on my relocation.

Religion
- Prayer times are VERY VERY important to know whether you are Muslim or not. As there are 5 major prayer times every day with three happening after the lunch hour and the times change by the week it can become rather combursome to keep it all straight. All of the stores and shops will close for prayer time, which can make going grocery shopping or dining out a real challenge at times. Currently, evening prayers are at 3:15pm, 4:45pm and 6:30pm. Most times, we have found you need to plan to be at the store or dinner by 7pm or later to do anything. Some people take this so seriously that they will stop nearly anything they are doing to attend prayer. The scariest example of this was related second hand to me. A man was an acting fire captain at a chemical plant when a compressor fire broke out. When the fire captain for the area where the fire was happening showed up to assist (he didn't run the fire crews as the company had a policy to have someone from another area do it to exclude any potential conflicts about stopping the fire versus saving equipment). Anyways, the acting fire captain was constantly looking at his watch as the fire was being worked adn then abruptly told the area fire captain that he had to leave as it was prayer time. The guy actually left in the middle of the fire and didn't even really do anything. I am going to assume this was a really extreme case and not to treat it as 'normal'.

Smells
- For me, Saudi Arabia has a very distinct odor to it. I think it is a combination of the number of people, the prevalant use of spices (for food and drink) and tobacco that combine to give a very unique ordor to nearly every place you visit. I may grow to like it the longer I'm here, but right now it is very strong and noticeable to me when I go outside my apartment compound to the plant or into the city. Nearly every outing into the city or shopping areas include visits into some of the spice/coffee shops. They have bins and bins of spices, coffees and numerous other things that I can only identify as dried 'something'. The mixture of so many different things is overwhelming for me and I can normally only be in the shops for a minute or two before I have to get out.

Overall I am enjoying my experience in Saudi Arabia, but it as started to highlight things that I have taken for granted growing up in the States.