Friday, June 29, 2012

Shopping Adventures

There's a new single woman named LW who just joined Aramco's legal finance group. Through mutual connections, I was asked to get in touch with her and show her around a bit. She and I could not be more different in personality, taste, opinions, etc. (I strongly suspect she votes Republican and she has TWO TVs in her 740 sq foot hovel because she leaves them on all the time for background noise; I probably turn my TV on two or three times a month at most) but when you live in the little bubble that is the expat community in Dhahran, you don't have the luxury of not hanging out with someone simply because they are different than you. So we've been out shopping a couple of times and I had her over to the house to meet the beasts for about half an hour.

Yesterday we went into the Dhahran Mall in Khobar with the express purpose of visiting the Pottery Barn store which opened a couple of weekends ago. Sadly, a store that I would never have shopped in at home has become a local tourist attraction for us expats. On our way through the mall, LW nabbed a pair of white flats to wear to work. It was the work of perhaps 10 minutes--she spotted them, dived into the store, tried on two pairs, asked for a less scuffed pair in her size, and paid the guy, all the while negotiating his lack of English. I didn't even know it was possible to buy shoes this quickly. I am not a true size and have to try on multiple pairs in each brand to find the fit.

We also stopped in at Saco World (sort of pale imitation of Home Depot) where we grabbed some 110V multi-plug extension cords (110V appliances are no longer available IK but all Aramco housing is still 110V), I got some paint for my contact training board (bright blue and brighter yellow) and some dog toys, and LW found a package of "real" sponges.

Then it was off to the glorious, glittery home furnishings displays of Pottery Barn. I was on a particular mission to find two new pillows for my couch. Surprisingly, we both gravitated to some lovely muted blue ones with a floral pattern. Pillows purchased, mission accomplished.

Then because it was about 15 minutes to prayer time (LW didn't believe me at first when I told her that we'd be locked out of the stores but locked in the mall during prayer), we skipped over to Chili's restaurant to get nutritionally disastrous but delicious burgers. Chili's is another business that I would never patronize by choice at home but it's about the only place to get a decent burger here. We had a fun time chatting about life experiences and our respective plans for the future.

All in all, it was a very successful day of shopping, one of the best I've had here so far.

I followed that up with an early morning trip to the commissary this morning (it's Friday so my weekend). No Saudis (they never get up that early on Friday morning), just a few bleary eyed expats like me wandering around. I didn't find any baking soda--it is a very irregular product here. But I managed to score some coarse sea salt for my grinder. I've been looking in numerous grocery stores for over two months for coarse salt. I of course purchased two large containers of it (per the usual hoarding).

And I found this over in the veggie section:


Yes, that is a container of locally grown, organic red bell peppers. Three of them for about USD 5. The com also had organic potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and some fruits from the same company. I am not sure I can express what an amazing and dramatic change this represents. First, you have to have consumer demand, then you have to have a Saudi farmer enterprising enough to see the potential and then make the effort to grow these items in some more or less environmentally friendly fashion.

Some other interesting shopping-related changes have been happening here in the Kingdom. Women have not been allowed to work in shops for quite some decades (because it leads to mixing of the sexes, which the mutawahs fear more than anything else). That meant that there were only male clerks in the lingerie shops. Imagine having to buy your bras and underwear from some smarmy, smirking Indian or Saudi clerk. It's bad enough that you can't try anything on (no Saudi clothing shops have dressing rooms) but you couldn't even be measured or fitted.

Enough women from sufficiently powerful families complained (for years) such that at the end of last year, the King decreed that all lingerie shops had to employ only women clerks by June 1 of this year. The sounds of wailing and rending of garments and gnashing of teeth from the conservative religious factions lasted for weeks. But the King didn't budge and it actually became a reality: you can walk past those shops and see women clerks in them. To be sure, these women clerks are veiled head to toe in abaya and niqab, but it is a giant leap for women's rights in this repressive country.

No comments: