Job Discussion Forums

[scot47]

In my days there - a great deal.

in 1970 we relied on snail mail. PTT was very basic and to phone from Jeddah you had to book a slot from the PO several days in advance. There was ONE bookshop. We used to fight over copies of "Newsweek" and the Beirut "Daily Star" Apart from a few locals and some migrant workers, English was an exotic language. Driving licenses were unknown and foreigners were not encouraged to drive. This meant that there were prestigious jobs for "drivers" - in those days reserved for locals.

I met ordinary Saudis who had actually worked in REAL JOBS in the Sudan and Egypt. Crime really was a rarity and the benevolent despot King Faisal was on the throne. None of us imagined that he would be martyred !

A better country ? Or am I just a deluded old man with nothing but memories ?

[cmp45]

I have noticed in the last 2 to 3 years an ever increasing cost of food items. 100 Riyals at the super market doesn't buy all that much anymore. I never used to pay attention to the prices and just bought what I liked.

[scot47]

2 generations before I arrived the political geography looked something like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arabia_1914.png

[fledex]

Here's an excerpt from an interesting interview with US Ambassador Hart that I just happened to be reading last night. He was posted in Jeddah in 1943:

Q: What was there in Jeddah at that point?

HART: Very little. It was an old walled city of about 30,000 people. It didn't have a single paved
street but it did have a black-top road to Mecca. Camels wandered right through the town. There
were no public utilities of any kind -- no electric lights, running water or sewage system. There
was a way of having water, from a water distillery plant which had partially broken down. It was
constantly breaking down. We drank distilled water, but because of the way it was handled we
always boiled it again. Otherwise, brackish water taken from open pits, was sold by 5-gallon tin
lots for general use. It was dug out of the coral reefs and carried in by donkey-back, etc. It was a
very primitive city, but fascinating to me as a vignette of ancient Arab civilization.

[johnslat]

Dear fledex,

Ah, makes one nostalgic for the "good ol' days," doesn't it? There were still camels and mules wandering the streets when I got there in 1980 - and packs of savage wild dogs.

Regards,
John

[BajaLaJaula]

Don't worry. The locals have gotten rid of most of the wild dogs. They will swerve off the road to make sure they kill any dogs unfortunate enough to be on the streets of Jeddah.
Taif still has some wild dogs that have survived somehow.
Average food cost for small family...about 600 Riyals a week. Food costs have gone up. But for the true TEFLER, you can still survive on about 20 riyals a week by stocking up on Falafel sandwich at the Falafel King. They are still only 2 Riyals a piece...and that is with Hoummus.
Other creature comforts can be quite a bit more though. WiMax internet service will run you about 80 USD month. And decent cable around 300 SAR a month.

[jaffa]

Food costs have gone up by 25-30% in the last year. So has petrol.

Salaries for EFLers are going down. Salaries for Saudis are (vaguely) going up.

In the last 50 years the population has increased by 631%!
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/saudi-arabia/population

When was it you were here Scot47? 19th or 20th century?

For some reason pound sterling has strengthened and I'm hanging on to my Rats for the time being, hoping for a UK collapse.

[sicklyman]

[plumpy nut]

The prepared hummus servings keep getting smaller and smaller at Carrefour. Also the canned Hummus, Tahini has gone up 50 percent, but the stuff is imported from Lebanon.

[jaffa]

[sicklyman]

[fledex]

We can only see some of the ruins of this in Jeddah now, but these are memories of Jeddah in 1948, from another US diplomat:

The Jeddah airport where we landed consisted of an airstrip and a small shed, which served as
ticket office and waiting room. The Bechtel company was already building a large new airport to
handle the growing number of annual pilgrims, but it was nowhere in sight at that time. I was
met by the Administrative officer of the embassy and, after collecting my footlocker, we
proceeded along the dusty road into the city of Jeddah. At that time, Jeddah was a small city of
perhaps forty thousand. While the old city wall which had defined its limits had recently been
torn down, the city had grown very little outside its perimeter. As one approached the city from
the airport one was struck by the strange beauty of the place, this vast bulk of tall white buildings
huddled together thrusting themselves into the air, gleaming in the intense sunlight. The
difference between Jeddah and Dhahran was striking. Here was an old, long established city, so
different from the new, artificial community I had just left. Entering the city through what had
been a city gate, I felt that I was about to begin a strange and wonderful life in world I could
scarcely imagine.

And some things were better in 1948 than they are now:

Muslim women were strictly prohibited
from driving, although foreign, non-Muslim women were permitted do so. While women were
required to be completely covered when in public, bedouin women from the desert and non-
Muslim foreigners were exceptions to the law. The women from the desert walked freely through
the streets unveiled, wearing their brightly colored garments festooned with gold bangles and
coins. At the hours of prayer, the religious police were on the streets of the market area of the
city (the souk) enforcing the law requiring all Saudis to proceed immediately to daily prayers.

[jaffa]

They've knocked down Mohammed's house and put up a luxury hotel
Paris Hilton is opening a shop there too! You couldn't make it up

http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/saudi_destruction_of_muslim_historical_sites1/

[trapezius]

[jaffa]

Not round here it ain't