kingdom

I have landed in the land of cheap gasoline and veiled women. As I boarded the flight to Saudi Arabia I began to look around. It was my 28th hour of travel and I was getting on a smallish plane from Dubai to Riyadh and the gate agent was taking passport to look at the person and their ID. Ahead of me was a family, a father two young boys and a mother and I guess an aunt. the mother and aunt were completely covered. Head, hands, feet, shoulders, face everything except the eyes and I wondered what exactly is the screener looking at? Can he tell who s under there is that safe? Of course nothing happened on the flight nor am I saying it was going to, just if the point of handing him the ID is to authenticate the bearer shouldnt something be done to actually authenticate him or her. So after landing I made it to immigration control where they take an eye scan as well as finger print and photograph you. I waited my turn and approached the officer. He did his business on the computer and then told me to place my right hand on the finger print scanner, after a few seconds I said "OK?" and he said "No." I looked at him and he called over another guard. They argued in arabic for about 30 seconds and the the first guard looks at me shoves me my passport and says "GO." I am not sure what happened but I know that none of the usual process for entry were followed. Just nuts. The hotel that I am in is nice I have a big apartment style accommodation which though not my style is furnished and comfortable. The job seems like it will be a breeze with little to no reason to worry and already I have found a dinner joint down the street that serves a bowl of chickpea soup and flat bread with a really nice tea for very cheap. There are of course all the regular western restaurants here from KFC to McD, pizza joints to dunkin donuts. I plan to stay away from the western food for awhile but already I can here the Dunkin calling my name. I cant have a beer so I deserve a delicious cup of coffee right? Right. Looking forward to getting started working and trying to pick up some basic arabic. Should be fun