Orientation

So I decdied to have a day off from the blog yesterday (apologies to those who've actually bothered to take an interest so far!) Mainly due to the fact that I'd somehow managed to blitz through a 50MB data add-on within about 12 hours. Interrogating my phone, the personal hotspot had done the vast majority of the damage and I can only assume that it was the ipad deciding to greedily update the various e-mails and media apps as soon as it was released back into contact with to the outside world. 

Yesterday was orientation. We weren't being picked up until late so John and I decided to meet up and go over to the mall for some breakfast. After knocking for him about 11 and obviously waking him up I went over to the mall myself and told him to meet me there. The food court is on the 2nd floor and I'd just arrived at the top of the elevator when the call for prayers began over the tannoy system. I have to say it's not the most pleasant of announcements anyway but it was particularly unwelcome because it signalled the start of the break where most shops close between midday and 4pm - not that I was intending to buy anything imparticular and the main ones like Carreffour stay open, though for the initial half hour or so even McDonalds lights go out while the Philipino staff sit and wait. I headed back across the street to the room for a bit to read, telling John to ring me when he was ready. Admittedly getting up at half 10 (UK is 3 hours behind) I was still pretty tired. I don't think I'd fallen sleep until about 3am (midnight back in the UK) and was woken up a few times by someone downstairs in the hotel scraping heavy furniture around to vacuum. Apparently someone complained at John for playing Eminem too loud in his room but keeping the whole building awake is perfectly acceptable... Our Romanian friend was certainly not best pleased. 

Eventually John was ready, by which time prayers had finished and the food court was open. Given the choice within the mall of the several different fast food outlets with little alternative I was glad it was past half 12 and I could simply claim that the KFC I had was lunch and not breakfast. We met our Romanian friend doing the same and joined him for a brief minute until he finished and said he wanted to go and find a pharmacy. Lunch gave us just about enough time for a slow amble back to the hotel before Ricky the driver pulled up to collect us. 

At the Al Hoty office we were taken through to the HR department. As with almost everywhere in Saudi, there wasn't a woman in sight (chauvanist I know) but six Philipino men all at desks. One of them introduced himself with a name I couldn't possibly pronounce with any accuracy and asked us if we'd like to call home using the landline. No doubt I'll get in trouble for saying this but I declined, being the middle of the day and assuming everyone would be at work. We were taken over to the desk of another man in the corner whos name was Buddy. He, as it turned out, is the HR rep responsible for contract procurement. On the desk in front of me as I sat down I noticed an invoice from M2R who had recruited me. Unbeknown to Buddy until I pointed it out this was actually their invoice for my recruitment and was $4000 US. Not bad I thought, until I saw another invoice from Al Hoty to ARAMCO which was for $60,000 US! No wonder they were keen to get me here... 

Buddy gave us a brief overview of what we could expect. 8 hour working days from 7am until 3pm Sunday to Thursday with 5 hours teaching a day and the rest for lesson prep. He told us that it's all very easy and there was little stress but as with everything so far, I'll take it with a pinch of salt and believe it when I see it for myself. I don't want you all to think that I'll never be coming back just yet but he did say that the majority of people come with the intention of just doing one or two years and end up doing 20. We all wanted to know about what to expect from the areas we would be living in but looking back, we were not really any better informed from that part of the conversation. Another man called Rodel then took us to a meeting room where we sat round a table. He presented us each with an introduction pack containing a number of documents. We each had to re-sign the latest versions of the confidentiality agreements, along with a couple of other forms for processing and then Fred took us through the introduction. 

Most of what was discussed was self explanitory and I already knew. I say 'I' because John had decided to come a bit blind with a sort of 'throw caution to the wind' attitude to this whole adventure. Informing him of some of the cultural habits that I'd discovered on the forums for the first time was by now a bit of a source of entertainment - he hadn't even heard of the forums. In fairness, I think I've already pointed out he's not one for technology. When we'd first got to the office he was asking for a nano SIM to fit his iPhone5 because they had given us micro SIMs. They 'd never seen this type before though and therefore didn't have them which was just as well because when I asked if his phone was unlocked all I got was a blank expression. After explaining the whole concept he decided he'd be best to follow my lead and buy a cheap phone too when we got back to the mall...

 We were given a document to read when we had time containing information about the culture and what to do or not to do etc. As it turned out the holidays are at our own discretion. A lot of time was spent discussing the travel arrangements of these. Constantine (the name of our Romanian friend as we had found out at lunch) wanted to discuss in great detail the best way to arrange this so he could travel home on a Thursday and effectively get 16 days off instead of just the standard 14. I'm sure these details will become abundantly clear during the time actually working there anyway but he is very scepital of anything here and gets very uneasy when things aren't exactly what he expects which given his background of working in Nigeria, Brazil, Libya and both onshore and offshore is quite different! I do wonder why he's decided to come here. It must clearly be a drop in the amount he would have been making out there and he seems quite obsessed with the cost of everything and whether or not he pays for things or Al Hoty.

Anyway, apparently I have to take my holidays before the end of my 5th month after signing on for ARAMCO which will be on Monday but at the same time I can't take them during my probationary period of the first 90 days leaving a relatively small window. I asked when the second holiday period can be taken and Rodel said between the end of month 9 and 12. Obviously the first thing I thought was that excludes July and August for holdiays. Rodel said they could extend the first period to the end of July  but that still meant I wouldn't be able to come back for Jenna and Matts wedding. He said there was an option to take the second leave period 60 days after the first though so if I use my first early enough then I should be ok to take my second to make it home at the right time. Buddy had said that there was an end of contract period leave of a month but Rodel made it sound like that may not quite be the case so I need to go back and clarify it further. He did tell us that the end of contract severance figure of roughly $4000US this year would be acrued each time and only be paid upon actual termination of employment with Al Hoty, which isn't a problem. Just means if I were to stay for longer than anticipated I'd have a big lump sum at the end to finish with. Explains all those stories I'd heard about ex-ARAMCO employees retiring with a lump sums in the hundreds of thousands after long service periods. 

We went through a relatively long list of contacts within Al Hoty being told who is responsible for what. Immediately I started noting the purpose of each one to the side of each name, something which both John and Constantine latched onto half way down the sheet and decided might be best. They make no secret that they are very keen to protect the Al Hoty reputation within ARAMCO and therefore any problem or concern must be directed through them before raising the issue directly to the ARAMCO principle to give them chance to sort it out first.

After this we were pretty much done. Brief introductions to a few more office staff whos names I have already forgotten (I have a terrible memory for names but fortunately it's doubtful I will ever come face to face with any of them again now anyway) and we were taken back the hotel. Dumping our bags and heading to the mall for dinner we decided to be adventurous again and went for Persian take away. Two lamb kebabs with pitta bread effectively but did the job. It was only half 6 and I was that hungry I could have gone straight to another take away and had something else there and then. I refrained and we once again took a pointless stroll around the mall and headed for Carreffour. 

Another half baguette (turkey salad and cheese this time) was all I ended up buying but I spent about half an hour looking around all the household appliances and such just trying to roughly compare prices with stuff back home. Most of it was a bit cheaper but not significantly. 

We headed back to the hotel where John wanted to set up his internet dongle on his laptop. Not having a clue I said I'd come sort it for him though. Really it should have been a simple plug and play process but for some reason the drivers wouldn't download and so it couldn't be installed properly no matter what I tried. In the end I went and got mine to try which worked fine so I put his SIM in it and told him to keep it seeing as it's currently of no use and eventually I'll have to take out a 12 month contract with a proper 4G modem and wireless router anyway once I'm sorted with a place to live. Once it was working I tried my best to configure a wireless network using Johns laptop to connect the ipad to but for some reason I couldn't. It's been a while since I've used windows and took me a minute to get my head around it again. In the end I looked up a video on how to do it on youtube but there was something the laptop continued to protest to and it just wouldn't work - I miss my mac... After a quick glance at facebook and attempting to chat to Stu I gave up on the slow connection and signed out, handing it over to John. He had been watching transformers 2 on MBC2 tho whole time sipping his non-alcoholic beer so I decided to head back to my own room and watch the end of that. 

I couldn't find channel 308 on my tv (it only went to 228) so I text john to confirm I had it right. I ended up going downstairs and asking in reception when I couldn't find it. The man sent up someone to have a look for me who managed to go straight to it albeit on channel 68 - another high point for me...

Once it had finished I decided it was about time to try to sleep, setting my alarm for half 7 in order to get up for a half 8 pick up to get the ARAMCO ID. John asked me to give him a ring to make sure he was up too...