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[Queen of Sheba]

Have you ever been shocked by the actions of a fellow teacher? Do you remember the craziest teacher you have ever met while working in Saudi Arabia? What did he or she do?

[sheikh radlinrol]

[omanized]

A teacher who told students on the day of exam that it was good that they prayed five times a day because "they would need it" to pass.

A real bitter, arrogant and spiteful man full of anger and frustration. I wish I could have given him a good knock on the head but no matter, he was fired within the month.

A guy who never cleaned his apartment - I mean dishes upon dishes, grease and crud caked on every surface, bugs on top of other bugs - and he was a "revert" who wore a dishdasha and acted relatively uppity about it all - he must have missed the parts in the qur'an and sur'aa's about cleanliness and hygene.

A rooftop pot plant on the shared apartment complex ? Clever.......

A woman who phoned the PRO at midnight demanding a wooden spoon for the furnished apartment.

That was a sample of 2005-2006 - who knows what the next year will bring !

omzd

[scot47]

The employee of Saudi Arabian Airlines who used to befriend feral cats in Saudia City (Khaledey6ah) for long enough to catch them, doctor them and ship them back to Arizona where he released them in the desert.

And I am talking not about 2 or 3 cats but lots !

Apparently most of the cats did not survice long, but the humanoid was happy and in the nature of things that is what is important.

As for those who have seen the light and 'reverted' I could tell a few humdingers about some of them !

[Van Norden]

I don't think any of my colleagues are "crazy." I see other maladies and shortcomings but not insanity. But they all think I'm mad. They truly "shake their heads and look at me as if I've lost my mind." I really couldn't care less. I know what I'm doing; I've never been so sure about anything I've done in my life.

If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them they know not me

[veiledsentiments]

Almost every place I worked had a person or two who obsessed about the feral dogs and cats. My neighbor in Oman used to trap all the cats and dogs and have them spayed. She would meet the fisherman and fill her freezer with sardines to feed the whole crew. I always figured it was her money and if she wanted to do that... no problem. But I heard that she took 20+ of the cats when she left.

Then there was the fellow that rescued all the feral dogs and his poor neighbors felt that they were living in a kennel. He had one favorite dog who slept with him and when she died, he took her out and buried her in the desert. So far not too odd.... but he then proceeded to go out regularly and dig her up to 'talk' to her.

These two didn't happen in KSA, but as I recall both of them were there at some time in their long careers.

VS

[dmb]

I wonder what the ratio is of psychonaut:normal(?) on Dave's is..

[Cleopatra]

So many crackpots, so little time.....

Here's a sampler of a few of the weirdos I have known in my years in the K of SA. These are just those who spring to mind right now - no doubt there are more.

- The one who got into a row with her students, who ended up saying "We hate you teacher!" Whereupon said 'teacher' puffs herself up and shouts "Well!!!! I hate you and your god!" Amazingly enough, she was not reprimanded for this. This person also physically threatened her colleagues on more than one occasion, and enjoyed showing off the sharp knife she took with her on the college bus. Said knife was ostensibly for apple peeling purposes, but noone was quite prepared to believe this.

- The one who wanted to have security cameras installed in her apartment because she was convinced that 'they' were coming in, downloading 'stuff' on her computer and stealing her 'candy bars'. This person also refused to order from the local pizzeria as she was certain that 'they' would poison her pizza en route to her house. She also refused to get water delivered, for similar reasons.

- The 'ex' military type who loved telling students what a paradise on earth occupied (my word, of course not hers) Iraq was. When this nonsense elicited the inevitable outraged reaction from offended students, GI Jane would complain, with great indignation, about how 'political' Saudi women were.

- The one who kept a Ramadhan-ish schedule all year round, rising at four in the morning to cook and eat a large meal, and then letting nothing pass her lips all day long. No, not even an 'iftar'. This person was not even 'allowed' to give her phone number to colleagues, and her husband refused to let her leave the house without his express permission. And she happily went along with it - although she did bravely sneak out to the supermarket on occasions when her 'roommate' was away on business.

That's just a selection. No doubt there are plenty more where those came from.

[Stephen Jones]

Where does one start?

My namesake who took his trousers off in class as a form of protest, and then was amazed to find he was the one fired and not his boss.

Another namesake,next door neighbour, and colleague on a CELTA course in Bangkok who decided he was going to take a Thai girl back to Korea as his wife. He chucked the first candidate because he decided she was too mercenary, but the marriage did go through one week later with the lady-in-waiting. I saw the guy the morning after the wedding and congratulated him. He explained that his bride had left the apartment at six in the morning to go back to his mother-in-law. He didn't turn up to class until mid-morning when he explained he had gone to fetch her but had been told, that the marriage with the attendance of dozens of guests and various Buddhist priests, all paid for by him, had actually been a sham as the girl was married already, but had hoped to divorce the old husband if it worked out with him, which it stopped doing round about three in the marriage night.

'Napoleon' who put large mattresses against the doors of his flat to deter Al-Qaeda from entering.

Napoleon's best mate, who believed he had been the target of various assination attempts by MI6, and that they had his computers bugged. It seems that MI6 have now changed tack because last time I saw him in the bank a couple of months back he explained he had got his new position after he had written a letter to Mohammad Al-Fayed which caused the British Secret Service to try and get him out of the country asap.

Then there was the convert to Islam who threw his TV out the window because somebody told him it was haram, and then spent the rest of the year coming round to other people's flats to watch his favourite shows.

Danny who never stopped talking. On one occasion he started telling me a story when I went into the bathroom to have a shower. I came out twenty minutes later and he was still telling the story even though there was nobody else in the room. You could tell when he came in because suddenly people would grab sheets of your newspaper out of your hand so they could pretend to be reading, when he tried to talk to them. He proved incredibly useful though because when the muttawa types came over to him to try and convert him he would say "Yea, that's just like it says in the Bible," and proceed to talk non-stop for the next hour, with the end result that after a week there were no more attempts at conversions for a whole year. He also managed to live in the kind of squalor that would have put Qeuntin (the dirt doesn't get any worse after four years) Crisp to shame.

Another hygienically challenged colleague also had a name beginning with D. His ultimate claim to fame was writing an unnecessary letter asking if they were going to renew him (nobody had realized his contract had expired) in which he stated that the money was better but he really missed teaching lots of adolescent pig-tailed girls.

Then there was the guy who stayed in Jubail less than twenty-four hours. The reason for his immediate exit was that at lunch time he asked everybody what pub they were meeting up in that night, and was horrified to find there weren't any. He left immediately and then wrote a letter demanding financial restitution because we had misled him by not telling him Jubail was like the rest of Saudi Arabia.

Back in my youth there was the French gentleman who hired me as DOS for his school in Madrid on Friday and sacked me on the Saturday. He made me come in on the Saturday -- possibly the first time I had worked that day in seven years -- and then fired me because I wasn't doing anything even though there were no books, no teachers, no students, no blackboards and no paper.

And finally, a special word for 'Dave The Suit'. After a week of trying to ingratiate himself with management and showing he considered himself superior to us mere teachers, he spent the next three months sitting in the front room of the shared house staring out the window talking to nobody.

Actually, that particular gig, produced a fair number of weirdos. There was the guy who got sacked for sleeping in class (we all felt envious that he had found something exciting to do in Al-Hasa the night before but it seemed he had merely resumed contact with the sid dealer he had before the same employer had sacked him for alcoholism the last time), and RB (who sells his own TEFL diplomas over the internet and even one year at TESOL Arabia) who had been part of Saddam's human shield, had 'married' a hooker from Bahrain (even though he already had a wife at home in Geordie land) and lived with her in Jubail until the contract expired when he drove her back over the causeway, and who on arrival immediately set about making vast quantities of home-made wine. Unfortunately he was told to vacate the house after three weeks to make room for the techies, so he decided carrying thirty litres of wine in plain daylight in Saudi was a no-no, and not wishing to pour it down the toilet, proceeded to drink the lot with his flatmate, with the results they both fell into a drunken stupor for the next 48 hours.

And to end on a positive note, let's mention somebody who stayed sane in the midst of all this nonsense, Mhd the DOS on the gig, who was very angry when RB's flatmate didn't turn up to work the next day or call in absent. When I explained that this was because D was lying paralytic on the kitchen floor at the time in a pool of vino, his reply was "Ah, well, if he had a reasonable excuse that puts a different complexion on things."

[Queen of Sheba]

These are fantastic memories, so which do you think it is:
a) Crazy people become crazier in the heat.
b) They can't get jobs anywhere else as their behavior is unacceptable under normal circumstances so they move to abnormal circumstances.
c) We are all a little loony tunes for being in KSA and the boredom and isolation only tend to bring out the worst in us.
d) They know they are crazy and seek out countries where they can get their medication without a prescription at dirt cheap rates.
e) Saudis are crazy and love the craziest of teachers.

[prarie oyster]

ALL of the above!!!

[007]

What a lovely stories about crazy �grammatical� male/female teachers, especially the stories of Stephen, it seems to me like reading stories about Ali Baba and the 40 thieves!

Here is one story about Ali Baba, the Muttawa teacher, and his student Bandar:

Ali Baba: �and you must arrest any unmarried couples without a chaperone.

Student: But teacher, how will I know if they are not married?

Ali Baba: Well, look at that young couple over there (he means Van and his girlfriend ). Are they arguing?

Student: No, they are not.

Ali Baba: Are they ignoring each other?

Student: No, they are not.

Ali Baba: Do they look tired and bored?

Student: Well, no. Actually they look quite happy.

Ali Baba: Then clearly they are not married! Arrest them!

So, I wonder if Ali Baba, the teacher, is considered crazy or not?

[Stephen Jones]

None of the above. People in Saudi are no crazier than elsewhere, it's just that you notice them more.

[sheikh radlinrol]

I can't beat Stephen Jones' stories but I was told that one of my predecessors would throw his jacket on the floor at the start of the class and then walk on it as he went to the blackboard and again as he returned to his desk. I also had a colleague who had two tie pins, one of which was in the shape of a pig and the other the English flag- which is, of course, a cross.
I also heard about a guy who got drunk on Thursday morning and then went sunbathing on the roof in the afternoon. The booze knocked him out and when he came round he was in need of treatment for sunstroke and burns. Probably had a terrible hangover, too.
As to the RB certificate which SJ referred to, people have told me that they receive CVs from India citing the ROBACO course among their qualifications.

[Stephen Jones]