Impressions #15 - a couple of videos around my neighborhood

I took 2 bits of video along the 25 minute walk from my apartment to the supermarket. Part of the walk is through this quiet neighborhood of mostly middle class homes. Typically they have a high wall right up against the sidewalk with a fancy door. This does not open directly into the house. This opens into a front garden and the house is 15-25' back. So, mostly you can only see the very upper portions of the houses from the street. Basically, they are little fortresses, intensely private. Saudis rarely invite non-family members into their homes. When they socialize it is usually at restaurants.

The next big of video is the busy shopping street where the supermarket is located. I am walking along the median strip. This is a common place to walk as the sidewalks are often torn up or obstructed. You can see a Pizza Hut, a Starbucks, a Pain d'Or. The place called Jarir Bookstore is where I got my painting supplies. They have all kinds of arts and crafts supplies as well as office products, computers, video games. I don't recall seeing any books there.

I know they're not very interesting videos but they give a bit of a feel of the streets. It was about 8:30pm and it gets dark about 7:30pm right now. The temperature was around 115-120 during the middle of the day. At this time of evening it drops down to about 100 and if there's a bit of a breeze you can almost trick yourself into thinking it has "cooled off".

Battle of the Muezzin - Impressions #14

Since the dawn of time (or at least, the ready availability of sound amplification technology) the Muezzin of the great desert kingdom have engaged in daily aural battles, challenging each other, competing to sing the praises of the Almighty, battling to stir in the hearts of the people feelings of awe and humility.



Walking through the streets of Riyadh, you are never more than a few blocks from a "Friday Mosque". Planning guidelines for new developments recommend that no house should be more than 500 meters, 1/4 mile, from a mosque. You should always be walking distance from one. There will be several in the project I am working on.

Anyhow, though they all sing the same words, each Muezzin has his own unique style of singing. Some are more florid, others somber. Nowadays, with every mosque having amazing sound amplification technology, you can easily hear 3 or 4 muezzin, in 3 or 4 different mosques, all singing at the same time. I'm sure all their amplifiers go up to 11. They certainly max them out.

I took this little video this evening as I was walking home from the supermarket. I happened to pass this intersection just as they got going. I could see the minaret of one of the mosques, but the other, the opposite direction down the street, was hidden by some trees.

Impressions #13 - How to Make Money on Horse Racing

This is my 13th entry and I thought it would be appropriate to honor that lucky number with an entry about horse racing.

One of the few TV stations that's in English broadcasts out of Dubai. It's a non-commercial station devoted to broadcasting horse racing events, 24/7. I suspect it is supported and subsidized by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He is a big lover of horse racing and operates one of the great racing stables of the world.

In the evenings, after work, I often leave the TV on to that station while I do other things and let my attention fall on it for a few minutes at a time. The animals are so beautiful and their joy in their prowess is a real pleasure to watch.



Anyhow, I noticed that the favorite (the horse with the lowest betting odds) very often won, or at least placed. I got to thinking, "The favorite wins or places so often. Why not just bet on the favorite in every race?"

So, I found the website of one of the major bookies, Ladbrokes, and pulled up 1 week's worth of racing results, about 180 races.

Engineer that I am, the next thing I did was to open Excel and create a spreadsheet. I entered the results into it and create 2 betting strategies, "Place" or "Win". Betting to "win" means that you get the full odds if the horse wins, i.e. if you place the minimum 2 British Pound (BP) bet on a horse with 4-1 odds, you get your 2 BP back as well as an additional 8 BP. Betting to "Place" means that if the horse ends in the top 3 (top 2 for races with less than 7 horses), you get the "Place" odds, which are usually 25% of the "Win" odds. So, the same 2 BP bet will win you 2 BP.

There are loads of other betting strategies, but these 2 are the simplest to analyze and probably the best approach, if you're betting on a favorite.

After a thorough and detailed analysis of the results for the 180 races I came to the following conclusion.

If you want to make money on horse racing, become a bookie!

impressions #12 - a few photos of my apartment

Here are a few photos of my apartment. First, the sitting area... comfortable enough. The furniture came with the place, though I'm free to get rid of it if I want. I might in a while. Everything's built of concrete. The walls are plastered and the floors are all tile. It makes it easy to wash the floors down since there's a fair amount of dust. But I'm up on the 3rd floor, well up above the street, which helps.


The bathroom is simple. Like you find around Europe, the shower has no enclosure. So make sure to stash the toilet paper away or it will get wet.


This is my front door handle. They love their "baroque" here. My building is brand new. It's 10 minutes walk from my office. I'm quite happy with it.

impressions #11 - a conversation about relationships

(The picture has nothing to do with my post. It's just a building I saw alongside the highway, an interesting blend of traditional and modern. Environmentally it's a good strategy for shading to reduce the heat load on the building, while still allowing the cooling benefits of breezes)

I was chatting with one of my younger colleagues recently, an Egyptian fellow of about 28. We were talking about the future, things we'd like to do, places to go. I mentioned that my long term plan, after completing my work with the company, was to return to France where I have a home, and live there.

He got excited and said how much he loved France. When he was 20 he moved there for a year to study.

"I met a French girl. We wanted to get married. But when I told my father he forced me to come home. He told me, "I didn't send you to France to find a French girl.". I haven't been back since."

He is married now, to an Egyptian girl. He has a daughter of 3 years old.

Everything is under control.

Impression #10 - The Inside Scoop

(Here's a photo I took this evening. You can see Faisalia tower on the left, the pointy one, and towards the right, Kingdom Tower, with it's crescent shaped top)

So I got into this taxi the other day and the driver spoke good English. He was Pakistani and most of the Pakistanis do. (Thank you colonial Great Britain, for leaving behind an education system that allows even the poor to learn a second language.)

I'd say about half the taxi drivers are English.

Well, this fellow, seeing I'm American, right away starts talking about the home country and what's going on there.

"Osama bin Laden didn't die in that attack in Abotabad."

I raise an eyebrow, "Oh really?"

"Yes, I am from Abotabad. I lived there. There are many men there that look like him."

"Oh, I see."

"No, Osama Bin Laden died 2 years ago from kidney failure."

"I heard he had weak kidneys or something. That much was in the news in America. But I had no idea he'd died."

"Yes, it's true. Definitely. He died 2 years ago."

"Very interesting."

I sort of waggled my head in loops, like a "yes" and a "no" at the same time. It's a gesture I've seen a lot of Pakistanis and Indians use. Maybe it's body language for "yo".

Anyhow, by now we'd arrived at my office. I thanked him for the interesting information and headed out into the sun.

(Remember, you read it here first. Osama did not die last May in Abotabad. You got the truth almost direct from the taxi driver in Riyadh. Now aren't you glad I'm here to share these amazing revelations with you?)

My Inner Englishman - Impressions #9

Today I decided to contact my inner Englishman and go for a walk in the noon day sun. Bad idea. Even the mad dogs were inside. (Actually I've seen quite a few cats but not a single dog since I arrived in Riyadh.)

This is the way it happened. It's the weekend, you see, and I slept in. Then I got up, washed my face, went back to bed and slept in again. By 11am I was beginning to feel ridiculous, like I really shouldn't be spending my precious weekend hours lying in bed in a stupor. I should be conscious and enjoying myself. And besides, I did have one important errand to run, a visit to the apartment manager's office to find out when my apartment will be ready for me to move in.

So I got myself up again, had my corn flakes, got my water bottle, put on my hat, and went for a walk.

It was hotter than yesterday and yesterday it was 112.

I wended my way across the dusty streets, hugging the building walls against the sidewalks, trying to stay in the 3' of shade, dashing across wide, sunstroked roads when there were breaks in the traffic.

My errand was done. I got my answer. "Next week." ... It's been next week for the past 2 weeks.

On the way back I made a serendipitous discovery. At the back of a large sunbaked parking lot, like the colorful mirage of an oasis in a sandy desert, a building rose up. Emblazoned across the top of it in bold colors was the word, "SAFEWAY". In my imagination it said "SAFEWAY!!!" but in reality it had no exclamation points.

It was all I could have hoped for and more. Never in my life have I been so happy to find myself in a Safeway. There were piles of fresh fruit and vegetables. There were California Avocados! I even found instant oatmeal. In the paper goods section there were large signs on the toilet paper that said "Imported from America". I guess we Yanks have a worldwide reputation for excellent in toilet paper manufacture. I also noticed, in the section for pet products, there was indeed dog food available. So there are dogs out there somewhere.

Well, I stocked up on the necessities and a few luxuries, put my hat back on and braved the sun once more.

Now I'm back in my hotel room, freshly showered and re-hydrated. I'll stay inside for the day and enjoy all the goodies that I bought.

Tomorrow I'll take a walk again. But I'll get up at 6am and take my walk early. Then I'll do my sleeping in during the afternoon.

Sorry, no photos today. Maybe tomorrow.

love to all my family and friends

Antonio