Escaping the Heat

The weather station near my house was reporting 118F at 2pm today. It’s as dry as a damned desert out there with about 5% humidity. The dew point is 32F which means, duh, no dew, because even at 9pm last night it was still 98F. To add even more misery, I think that a shamal is trying to start up this afternoon. That could mean several days of strong, hot winds from the north bringing dust down from Iran. All this and it’s only mid-July.

I usually don’t post about my travel in advance but I am heading out in about 10 days and I am really looking forward to this particular break. I’ve been a bit frustrated at work and taking some time off is often a good solution to that sort of attitude problem.

I regret leaving the pups for so long (I’ll be gone for a month) but this trip will be my repat, an annual trip OOK that I am legally required to make. I am pre-imbursed by Aramco according to a somewhat arcane formula for repat expenses.

I will be out for nearly all of Ramadan (and thus will not participate in the dubious pleasures of the sin room) and the subsequent eid (a thinly veiled excuse for Saudis to expand their overindulgence of eating and buying into daylight hours). Not that I’ll particularly miss either of those events. But last year I was here during Ramadan and got the most amazing amount of work done. No Saudis after noon, lots of expats gone as well, no meetings. I started and completed some big projects during that time. This year, I’ll be one of those expats escaping the heat.

A couple of the places I’ll be traveling to will be much cooler than here but that isn’t the reason I chose those places. It’s simply important to get out of here for a while.

A friend and I went to Bahrain on Friday. It was the most normal day you could imagine: walking around a mall ogling hideous shoes and USD 4,500 purses (that were not too hideous), having lunch, then having a couple of glasses of wine in a nearby hotel. When I called her that morning to remind her that the driver was on his way, she said, do I need my abaya? (She’s new here.) And I said, hell no! And that’s another reason to look forward to trips out. I can act and talk and dress like a fully grown, actual human being when out in public.