Gallery Now Live!

The new gallery based on my last photoshoot is now live. You can access it from my portal: http://www.pfff.co.uk.

If you dislike the layout, fear not, the photo album mechanics are based on FrontPage and annoy me greatly. I'll be resolving this with a java rewrite over the coming days.

Enjoy.
--- Justin.

Embassy Photos

Greetings anyone who found this web address and who was looking for photos. They will appear shortly over in the gallery section that's currently closed (on the left).

If you'd like to be notified when the gallery is available and can revisit this site, drop me an email here and I'll see if I can accomodate you:



--- Justin.

Jaffa Cakes are Evil

Can a biscuit be evil? If it could, Jaffa Cakes would top the list. There's something about that orangey bit that just makes you go, "oh, just one more then". I wish I knew why, that way I could counteract the effect.

Maybe there are clinics. A detox programme tempting patients with Jammy Dodgers or something. I could start a whole new science.

When I travel the world, food products always seem to have the most amount of culture associated with them.

Now, I know that sounds strange but approach an English man and say "Twinkie" to him and he'll look at you like you're an idiot. Say the same to an American and he'll suddenly become a kid again thinking of that cream-filled sponge.

Try "Kraft Dinner" on a Canadian or "Veggiemite" on an Australian, they all evoke deep cultural ties drawing people back to childhood.

Now admittedly in the 21st century that's not a fantastic view of humanity, but drawing people back to their youthful past is probably where history and nostalgia start.

Homage

I hope Bunny appreciates the homage. The following are three little doodles I did today ... I'm thinking of a cat spin-off of Bunny but I'm not even pretending that this is my originality; it is however my pen and as you can see from the quality art, it's not a tracing or cut-paste theft.

Text is a bit small if you have a small screen (you can click to enlarge), it however reads:

"The Bunny wondered if Gen had given any thought to Justin bringing down the box of cats"

and refers to me bringing down down cat related items to London this evening.





Here's hoping I haven't offended anyone. :s

Just call me Shaun

It was raining. You know, that slime rain. Dirty rain that just slips around, muddy, black, icky rain; oh joy. I park and dash through the dampness, past the church and into the town square, through a back alley and into the barber's doorway.

I can smell the musty cigarette smoke as I climb the stairs and the mostly-talk radio blaring out at unnatural volumes. At the top are a set of Church pews; in fact most of the place looks like it used wood reclaimed from a church. It's a split mezzanine and the upper level is protected by a pulpit balcony. Thick heavy wooden bench/tables flow down either side of the room and a selection of traditional leather barbers chairs await the clientele.

Heavy wooden mirrors hang from thick chains rest in front of each position. Chain and ironmongery also descends from the ceiling to complete this rather macho look into the world of haircutting. Things then get strange.

First you notice the radiator grills from classic cars attached to the walls, and then slightly disturbing B&W fashion shots of camp men and butch women screwed to the walls; screwed in a random way. No pattern, no logic.

(continued)

I sat and contemplated; the stack of guy mags left on the side has never grabbed my interest. I watched as another customer was sheared; the place was relatively deserted leaving just the one dedicated guy cutting away.

When I finally got into the barbers chair I was presented with the habitual dilemma: how to get what I want. How do you describe this event to a professional with scissors in one hand and a switch-blade in the other? I did my usual mumbling vagueness, he nods his head and another random haircut is created.

"How are we today sir?"

Ah, I realized another pleasantry conversation on the way. Don't get me wrong, I'm a chatty guy, but this always seems so awkward. Neither of us really wants to talk; it'll be about the weather or something one of us doesn't care about; yet it seems inescapable, it is then he enters into this whole rant all by himself.

Lack-luster junior-boy was on a skive. Junior-haircutting-boy it transpires is often on a skive. Gets in late, wants to leave early, sulks and skives when he doesn't get his way. Real youth of today stuff.

He rants, I listen, he cuts. Bliss. No thinking required.

Silence. Oh heck, he's finishing ranting. My eyes darted around the room, quick, another conversation topic, then gold-dust. Snuck neatly in the corner of the mirror was a photo. A photo of a racing lurcher dog. I ask. He talks. Ahhhhhhh. I learn about Slippers and the whole Royal-esc racing community. Rich people playing as he put it. More importantly the cutting continues and slowly I go from mad-professor to member-of-the-public.

It's then he pulls out the switch-blade. Now I don't know if everyone gets to experience one in their day-to-day life, but the deft hand of a barber always fascinates me. The blade swings out with such precision from its ivory handle with grace and skill, dips in the ethol and then follows my imperfect skin contours without any loss of blood.

"Would you like any product?"

Ah our transaction is nearly complete.

"No, no product."

He removes the chairs armrest and I slide out to pay. His change draw opens and his real world is revealed; a mix of papers, money and more importantly a spirit bottle. A conversation for another time; do I care? Not really, the guy cuts damn good hair.

Cat Watch

I lay in bed last night. Lights out. Dark. All I could hear was a mixture of wind, purring and licking. Cats do a lot of licking. Noisy licking. Or my cats do. There I am, trying to get to sleep and all I can hear is a trio of slurp slurp slurp.

I wonder if there's an Olympic event for that too? The 0-60 equivalent for cat cleaning. Maybe the contestant cats first have to run through a field, over the cabbage patch and through the bush with all the burrs on; that's when the clock's started.

Serious amount of cat antics these days in the house. I doubt it's all frisky considering the amount of chopping and spading that went on in their early life. Maybe it's the weather? All cooped up inside. Over the passed days other than the lick-a-thon I've seen:

1. Cat Leap Frog
   Evil jumping cat over cat action – often with the head of the jumpee pushed into the carpet
2. Cat Puppet Show
   Head only showing through curtain madness – look at me, look at me
3. Numerous trials of Window-Bed-Jump
4. Peg-Bite-Scream
   An evil advancement on the Wake-My-Wife event involving wrestling maneuvers never before seen
5. Garden Chase
   A rapid pursuit and rose-bush sitting game

Has the moon shifted or something?

Cat Watch will continue as the events unfold. I hear cameras will be allowed into the next event.

Creativity Isn't Linear

(random but related: sleepy weekend cats)

It's interesting. I never expected Marshmellow World (sic: that's how it's supposed to be spelt) to get complaints but I do and they're all for not posting regularly enough. If I don't post every day people start asking what's up. More interestingly is that if I post on the specialized blogs (Digital World, Echoes of the Machine) people are unsatisfied.

Now I should be flattered, but creativity isn't linear (quick: trademark), meaning sometimes the world is just too busy to pop-up a post regularly. Still, this weekend had me in stitches when Live Journal bit virtual dust after a power-outage. Millions of bloggers (and they post at 441 per second FYI) suffered withdrawal.

Still I'm sure the blogger.com crowd stuck two fingers up at them and sneered; why people feel the need to start them-and-us wars is beyond me. It's like the whole Final Fantasy XI versus World of Warcraft thing; it all gets unnecessarily ugly when you're arguing about shades of blue. That said, Bunny put the LJ problem particularly well: http://www.frozenreality.co.uk/comic/bunny/index.php?id=137.

So I'll try to keep the posts regular, but I lay the gauntlet down to the world too:

Make things interesting enough for me to post

You hear that world? It's on your head.

Corporate Calendars

Every year I get another influx of scary corporate calendars. This years top contender has to be the beauty posted below offered by an office service company.

What I want to know is,

What Were You Thinking???

Errr - it's a bridge ... and a really big chair; clearly the months of January and February.

"I'd like to be anywhere but here"

"I went to spec-savers and got really bad glasses".

Do camera men take clear photos? Well yes, however someone has done a poor-mans photoshop on the blurry woman with the mobile phone.

Pleeease let the statue topple on the little guy.

"When I grow up, I'll be a real manager" ... rather than building castles in the sand ... oh it's a metaphor, now I get it.

[Homer] Mmmmm, curly corporate sandwiches. :gaaaaaaaa:

Do you think the laptop user knows their portable is off? Plus, can you squeeze anymore gadgets on that table?

Friends? Yeah right.

See kids, copy toner does send you mad.

"Hi, I'm Mr Slick. Grease me sometime."

Cat Olympics

I wake early. Well, early on my timetable. I was shaving this morning in our en-suite; it was dark, I was tired. I knew the cats were up to something from the sounds they were making outside the door; I assumed they'd found another animal friend of the rodent variety.

Nope, they'd invented a new game: Wake my wife.

Wake my wife is a detailed game; it involves three cats. If you don't have three, try asking a neighbor or two. The basically rules of wake my wife can be seen below:



As you can see, like all good games, we have an umpire; Cat C in this case. Cats A and B compete in a detailed marshal arts boxing game, of which the rules are still unclear to me. Periodically (I personally believe when an ippon score is achieved, although waza-ari might be sufficient) cats A and B are required to exchange places; movement into Zone 2 however can optionally involve inter-chair-leg combat.

The game is completed when my wife (in bed) is woken.

In situations of a tie (which I think are common) we move into phase-two. Phase-two involves bag chess; it's an advanced game only to be handled by the most experienced of cats.

Bag chess requires a posh shopping or trade-show bag with a heavy string handle. Cats A and B continue their match with the objective of the loser cat being forced into the bag. This is done by one of the cats being tricked to enter through the other cat attacking the string handle.

Follow ups include curtain attack, bed jump and the traditional gladiator event of slaughtering live animals.

The Cat Olympics run for a period of seven years.

It's good to be me

I work in a corporate mountain. Every day I get up and go work in the dark. I enter my little tunnel and start digging. I've been told we're building a rocket ship, or maybe a tower, but as I work in Middle Earth it's hard to see what it is, or how far we've got.

Today however is special. This week our employee representative (non-union) gets to meet on the Advisory Council. A puppet body of people assembled to show the company cares; we talk, they file their nails or something. I however get to tell my representative what I think, and what I'd like discussed. What follows is the end of the email I submitted:

... then again I'd also like to know why the purchasing system sucks and we cycle through freezing different cost-codes. I'm quite dumbfounded how a company can get so tied up on consumables like paper when it's consumed at a fraction of the per-hour-rate of a single engineer.

I have grave concerns for a company whose immediate answer to business success is to cut off its arms in order to save weight or has processes that are so inefficient they waste people's time and corporate money.

But meh, I'm not known for speaking my mind and can't think of anything noteworthy.

Sometimes life hands you lemons and you just have to make lemonade.

Out on the town

"You want to buy Office, Windows, games?" a dark man from India or Sri Lanka offered in broken English.

It was our 3rd time in Khobar and these guys never let up. They appear like cockroaches from the wood work dashing out of seedy electronics shops scattered through the district; piracy law enforcement hasn't really made it as far as the Middle East. In fact, it's its own worst problem; buying genuine goods can be somewhat tricky as almost everything has a counterfeit equivalent. That might not in itself be a problem if you have questionable morals, but with counterfeit goods also comes questionable quality; basically you get what you pay for.

We walked by ignoring them; a seasoned technique acquired in London to all the fly-sheet workers that accost you. The pavements in Khobar however are somewhat trickier to negotiate, all are owned by the appropriate shop therefore depending on the merchant's prosperity the quality of the pavement varies; within feet you can cross concrete, rubble and fine marble. We darted down a pedestrian section and entered the jewelry district; within Khobar shops are organized into types. A few pavement hops later and we entered one particular shop.

Now, in some respects this is the most mystifying thing I find about shopping in Saudi Arabia. This jeweler (to me, the untrained eye), looked no different than any other jewelry shop in the district. Most were unkempt, dusty buildings with little renovation; their attention utterly dependent on their trade. This jeweler however was apparently the place to buy and everyone knew it; within 2 minutes of entering the place it had gone from empty to heaving.

An old ragged unshaven man with missing teeth greeted us, bottled glasses amplifying his tired yellow eyes to frightening proportions. He leant forward as my mother-in-law introduced us; recognizing a regular client he beamed knowing there was a sale to be had. I shook the man's hand and then noticed how all the women I was traveling with merely got a nod; the cultural etiquette had kicked in, women were not to be noticed unless a direct interaction was required and even then no physical contact was permitted. Khobar might have been liberal in Saudi standards due to the size of the ex-pat community, but it still had its limits.

In fact, culturally, this was hard for me; being told what not to do can make things so much harder to avoid. For days I'd be practicing to avoid eye contact and ignore females, but when a black clothed woman with a piercing set of eyes passed it was hard to avoid. I'm not sure if it was because the eyes were the only place to look or the spectacle was so alien to me; either way it wasn't due to desire (the cultural motivation to cover in the first place) but it was equally unfair as my female companions could pretty much look at whatever the heck they wanted ... such was there insignificance on this particular stage. I however sense that the core values might actually centre things a little differently, for all I knew the women of the region had utter control of their puppet men and this was just for show.

Our jeweler friend started pulling out his new stock; trays and trays of dusty trinkets appeared as if shipped from an impoverished labor force in Indian or Pakistan. With every new item on offer he pulled out a rag and began buffing, ensuring everything was "best quality", "best price for my best customer", there isn't a shop you can enter where you're not offered such things; bartering starts with a serious amount of salesman BS.

He rattled around the store as requests and variations on existing offerings were produced; anything for the sale. He produced a necklace that my wife particularly liked and placed it on the counter for her to wear; my wife however was having trouble with the clasp. In one movement he deftly grabbed the necklace and smacked it on the glass counter, a slightly surprising action. He repeated the movement 3 more times, smack, smack, smack; on the final one a minute ball-bearing rolled out from the catch as for some reason there was a transportation ball holding it place. An unusual solution to a problem but it seemed to work well for this professional.

In the end my we selected some nice pieces and they were dutifully weighed as, despite their workmanship, everything sold on weight. My mother-in-law stepped in:

"So that's your best price?"

"Yes yes very good price."

"Your best price for your best customer?"

"Okay okay, very best price."

The price dropped a few levels; we paid and left to continue our exploration, no complaints, no shock reactions, this was merely business as usual.
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Our next stop involved a shopping mall; something I hadn't quite expected. I suppose if there's money these things will appear anywhere, but when you consider that most cars in the city were held together with rust and most buildings were held together by ... well ... barely anything, a shopping mall was the last thing I expected to see.

We entered somewhat surreally into British Home Stores, a shop from home (literally). In fact, it was no different from home; I mean by this that it was completely identical. BHS has been shipped lock, stock and two smoking barrels to Saudi Arabia. All the clothes looked the same, the signs, the decor, everything.

My brain melted. I was surrounded by a female population that wore black abayas* in daily life who were shopping for British style clothing no-one would see; I fail to rationalize this even now.
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We entered the main mall. The shops from middle-America and the UK were everywhere, name a brand and it was here. I'd entered an Arabian Stepford; Abaya clad women pushed wriggling babies through the corridors. There were however differences, for one, the mall was utterly silent; no one spoke unless in hushed tones. Men also walked ahead of the women and of course no clothes shop contained a changing room; it was all strictly a buy and return philosophy.

We continued to amble around until 11.45am at which point things got a little hurried. The mall was closing for prayer time and I was being inducted at the very coal face of the religion.

My first introduction to prayer time actually came back at the camp. I was being introduced to a friend of the family in a travel centre. She pulled out a calendar for 2005 and carefully identified the prayer times on it; to be fair I'd just thought she was really religious. In reality the whole way of life in Saudi revolves around those times; five periods of the day are reserved for various length prayers, each week these times move on ever so slightly. Without the calendar you can't shop.

When prayer time starts, everything closes. That being said, shop workers aren't actually Muslim (on the whole), so prayer time is merely an opportunity to create a good'ol downtown traffic jam. We ambled home with the rest of the city.
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*Abaya: (Arabic) a loose black robe from head to toe; traditionally worn by Muslim women.

When the wind doth blow...

I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of our metal bin being thrown hard into our wooden gate. Outside I could hear the howl of the wind resonating the fence. Everything that could move was moving and vibrating, the house sounded like it was about to take off from Kansas and arrive in Oz. We were close to the height of the storm.

I lay in bed deafened by the sounds around me. I could hear the neighbours' wheelie bins vying for position down our street. Debris was toppling and the sound of a bouncing coke can threatened damage to my car.

I opened my eyes. Beside my wife I had three cowering cats; this wasn't a good sign. We are rarely visited by the trio during the night unless something serious was happening; you know, semi-dead animals, strangers in the area etc. I feared it was time to get up.

I slipped out from under the duvet and stumbled to the window groping for the blind and curtain cords in the twilight. The theatre I saw revealed to me matched what I was hearing; chaos from god was before us. I shrugged my shoulders; there was little I could do before morning. I just hoped that no-one was foolish enough to enter the storm from choice; today, was not a good day to die, bed was a far more appealing option.

Cultural Cuisine

As we passed the camp gate house the guards saluted us; a common practice showing their company pride. I noticed they'd finally installed the bullet proof glass maybe that had put them in higher spirits? For a country known for its surprise attacks on commercial targets, I guess any change was a good thing; these guys were literally in the front line.

It was a cool night in the desert and all nine of us were crammed into a 4x4 SUV heading for Dammam and a popular Arabian restaurant frequented by Saudis and Ex-Pats alike. The journey there was somewhat haphazard, GPS guidance systems are illegal in Saudi Arabia, and from our repeated attempts to arrive at our destination I was beginning to think maps and street signs were too.

The country on the whole seems to be wrestling with its past and its future. You can see why an anti-western, anti-commerce terrorist originated from the region. On the one hand you can see a predominantly nomadic way of existence being decimated by rapid growth of the country; a growth that while global has very western origins. Old versus new, culture in crisis, whatever the motivations that unstoppable change must rub sorely on a regions heritage. Terrorism is inexcusable, but you can also feel where the angry and frustration originated from; religion is merely the tool.

Saudi was formed around the time of Lawrence of Arabia and between two world wars. The Saudi royal family was a self declared monarchy formed when the leader of one of the nomadic tribes strategically interwove control of all the other regions tribes using a mixture of war and marriage as its basis. Lawrence contributed to modern life in the region by ensuring close bonds with the west and ultimately America. Trade and oil became perfectly timed world history leading to a strong, but western styled, control of the region.

So as we drove through the streets of the city you could see poverty, immigrant workers on a bread line, construction and growth, renovation and demolition; a country as always in some sort of conflict.
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Our restaurant was an unusual free-standing structure best described as a kind of mock Arabian palace. Laid out with a network of levels and rooms for dining, its age indefinable; Disney may well have built it or the sand could have merely blown it in from the desert.

We were greeted by staff dressed in (what must be) a form of traditional clothing. Ballooning cloths and scarves topped off with large silver daggers and unfeasible headdresses made these guys look like serious full-time extras in an Indiana Jones movie. Imagine a unit of the Sultan's Guard and you'll have a close approximation.

We were lead quickly through a covered court yard complete with stylized pond and fountain. Galleried balconies over looked the area with Arabian nomadic paraphernalia hanging between sections of the building. In essence I expected Harrison Ford to swing through on his whip, collect the girl and swing out; my imagination does wonder somewhat.

The room we were shown to was specifically for consuming coffee; heavily scented cardamom and something specific to the region. A collection of Arab style gentlemen fussed over huge teapots of boiling water laid out on the floor and driven by the naked flame of camper stoves. We sat awkwardly on cushions against the rounded edge of the room as the ceremonious coffee was served out of long silver coffee pots into the tiniest of handle-less cups placed the furthest distance possible from the pouring spout.

Coffee here is as important as the Tea Ceremony is in Japan. The process of making the coffee is traditionally intricate involving multiple brewing stages. The act of consuming the coffee is the ultimate honor on arrival or departure.

Following multiple cups we were lead to our dining room and asked if we'd like to tour the building. We declined, saving this particular adventure for after our meal.
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Our dining room was another round room accessed via a balcony on an upper floor. Each dining room was themed based on a region of Saudi; the themes were subtle, minor variations in pattern and color on the walls. In the center of the room was a long low table, padded blankets and pillows scattered around; this was to be a floor sitting affair.

For the evening we'd accosted a Lebanese ex-pat who spoke Arabic. We'd hoped that linguistic backup would assist us however the reality was that our waiters spoke perfect English and came from India. It's virtually unheard of to have a Saudi working in the service industry; it is regarded as beneath them.

The food wasn't as exotic as I'd expected; rice, meats, stews and dips. These were things I was already familiar with, the flow of African, Moroccan, Indian and even Southern Europe showing that the world wasn't as large as a child imagines. Within this cuisine however, puffed bread served as the primary eating utensil and pretty much everything was shared. We dined and drank Saudi champagne; a non-alcoholic fruit punch typically consumed by westerners as a surrogate to alcohol in this alcohol-free country.
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Once we'd completed our dining we were lead out for our tour. Essentially the restaurant served equally as a museum and through its hallways and upper levels, artifacts associated with Saudi history could be found. Our guide led us through various rooms to see a traditional (and working) bread furnace plus various encased curiosities. It's within this context that things got decidedly strange.

Artifacts in Saudi Arabia seemed to consist mainly of the junk left by the 20th century. Now please don't get me wrong, any effort for the preservation of history is worthwhile, but I felt that an entire country had been cheated. I was shown 1920's typewriters, broken bakelite phones, glass syringes and metronomes; things people had left behind. Sure there were milling stones and primeval tools, but nothing in-between. For me, it emphasized even more the loss of heritage and the struggles within a country. This was someone else's history being used for a surrogate nation; I found it disturbing.

Fortunately I also found humor.

In Asia great fun can be gleaned from Japlish and other variations on the theme; people using English, but in ways that amuse by their technical inaccuracy. Within our Saudi restaurant museum I found similar humor. Odd word ordering, or incorrect labels; one of a metronome insisted it was a temperature gauge. I imagined flummoxed Bedouin's trying to determine how cold it was outside by the sound of a ticking tempo.

Our dining menu was also littered with such things: Dish A was available in one-person and 1/8 goat forms. Yup, two lines of Arabic differing solely by the bracketed phrases 'person' and 'goat'. Did they mean the dish actually contained a person, or that the 2nd dish was for a small goat?!? We were too fearful to ask.
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(click to enlarge)

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At the end of our tour I stepped blindly into the final room; how stupid could I have been? It was a shop containing all manor of fleecing trinkets with prices to match. What the heck? I was in the middle of a country that didn't allow tourists except in small numbers under armed guard and suddenly I was a fleecing target? Of course this was for ex-pats and essentially an era that was departing, but still. With pleasant smiles and a denial of speaking English I backed-up and left.

We returned to the coffee room and consumed more strong cardamom coffee. The evening drew to a close with another piece of the jigsaw making a little more sense.

Into The Unknown

We drove across the causeway close to midnight, the warm stale air of the desert mixing with the humidity of water. In front of us was a series of check points and border controls, behind, the allure of western culture, neon and Festive Winter Celebrations.

I imagined that the process of entering an Arabian country was indifferent from gaining access to an obscure part of the Eastern Bloc. Money being the first step in the process. We ambled forward to have our car scanned and visa scrutinized; suspicion merely being the act of queuing. Our papers were in order; weeks of bureaucracy had ensured that. But in the end, traversing the series of border checks took a mere 20 minutes; a few grunts, a little more queuing and we'd entered a new country.

The lights faded behind us and a mix of orange lamps and sand lit our way. No women drove, no advertisements beaconed our trade. Billboards contained stern men with thick black moustaches, and tea-cloth headdress. Meaningless Arabic offering us banking or maybe the royal family; who could tell which? All we knew was that we'd finally entered Saudi Arabia.

I'd like to have said that every few miles a police road block would check our papers and move us on, but in reality, it was hard to determine why entry into the country was so restricted. Once in, you had free access to pretty much anywhere you wanted to go (more so if you were Muslim). Sure, the occasional road-block complete with police-officer sleeping in his jeep was encountered, but little else.

Bahrain came across like Las Vegas but with a British colonial feel; bright lights, new buildings, sand, sea and fun. While Saudi was an opposite with desert, rubble, twisted metal and construction. “Opening 2010” as I liked to say.

We entered the Aramco camp in the early morning. Strict checks were performed by armed guards to ensure that the incidents that plagued other parts of the country and other camps didn't occur there. The edge of the camp was lit like a prison border; high-tech surveillance ensuring no night time mission could penetrate. To add comfort F16's periodically patrolled the area flying low level around our perimeter; somehow you knew you weren't in Kansas anymore.

To call the camp a camp is somewhat of an injustice. A small city would be a better approximation. Tens of thousands of people cohabited this ex-pat community built during the 70s and 80s for a predominantly American workforce. From houses to traffic lights, plug-sockets to garage doors, you truly felt you were in middle America rather than the Middle East. Yet the westerners had fled in their droves; sections of the camp being a ghost town, other areas taken with an influx of workers from India and Asia. You could see the heritage, but also the future of this company run complex.

The camp was also completely self-sufficient, it contained shops, schools, hospitals and entertainment. In fact, the camp was so alien to Arabic culture that women drove and walked around bearing arms and legs to the winter sun. There was a golf course despite being in a desert land, and reclaimed water ensured it was an oasis of palm trees and manicured lawns. Teams of low paid male workers diligently preened and sculpted the forna and flora daily; women however aren't allowed to work.
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Over the week we haggled for purchases and mused at markets akin to the set of Indiana Jones. We ate with our hands in a true Arabian restaurant and we drove in the local traffic (which isn't dissimilar to driving in London). We saw the Persian Gulf, which is known as the Arabian Gulf in Saudi. We followed the rusting pipelines of the oil industry through to huge refineries by the coast. We overlooked fishing vessels while prayer time echoed from the speakers of mosques across the land.

We also did the most sinful of sins; we celebrated Christmas with all the smuggled contraband such festivities entail.
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I started 2004 sipping tea in the lounge of Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel; the sound of chamber music wafting over the great room and white uniformed waiters discretely refilling cups. Curiously, I finished the year also bound to fine dining but this time sipping Martinis and Mai Tais at the Ritz Carlton in Bahrain while (rather oddly for the Ritz) listening to Britney Spears. It just goes to show, the future is anything but predictable. I wonder what 2005 will bring.