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[goingbald]

Gosh, QoS!!

What a lovely post. While I agree with Stephen Jones for his pragmatics, I do find that if you make an effort, you can have a really good time.

If you click with someone, you click with em, regardless of where you or they are from. The only barriers to making friends that I see are linguistic and cultural.

If one or both of the parties to a friendship can overcome the language barrier, and is prepared to question the assumptions of their own culture(s), two or more people can get to know each other and enjoy social intercourse. You often find that many things about the Saudi culture, after you've been here a while, appear distinctly impressive, rather than backwards, or ridiculous, or any other words an expat would care to use.

I don't have particularly strong relationships with any Saudi of my age that I know, but these things take time. Once I was holding forth about cultural differences, and my interlocutor expressed a lot of interest in what I was saying, even after he had been told "when the food arrives, speech is cut off". (an Arabic proverb of questionable pedigree. I think it's a modern one).

I humbly believe that Saudis are not averse to adopting things from other cultures, as long as they retain certain core values which are quintessential to them.

You never know how things are going to turn out. You might enjoy a wasta friendship with someone/some people. You might enjoy business friendship. You might just enjoy the age-old friendship of two or more people enjoying each other's company.

Don't stay in the expat ghetto.

gb

[psouthan]

"After being here 3 weeks these hopes had been crushed"

Why did you contiue to stay?

[Taiwanlight Zone]

Van said:

[Van Norden]

[Queen of Sheba]