(David Letterman style)
10. If you use the bathroom any time after 10am, the water is so hot after running for 3 seconds that if you don’t wash in that amount of time, you will literally burn you’re a** off.
9. You turn off the water heater to create a reservoir of cool water. Thus, the “cold” tap is used for hot water and the “hot” tap for cold.
8. You can guess a person’s heritage by the B.O. bouquet they leave behind them from the food they eat. And don’t get all uppity and insulted in the comments, in 40C+ weather (120F) EVERYONE stinks despite O.D.’ing on perfume! The stink is universal, just the nuances of an individuals parfum differs from group to group. Examples:
· Egyptians, Levantines, and many Hijazis-garlic
· Najdis-onions
· Indonesian-Indomie and chilli
· Indians-curry
· E.P.’s-Fried fish with onion
· Me- all of the above (I’m just guessing since I eat all those foods. It’s hard to smell your own B.O. unless your Mary Katherine Gallagher from SNL-that’s for u DF)
7. You add at least one additional shower to your daily routine and afterwards apply so much powder, your entire torso becomes white in an effort to stave off above mentioned B.O. for a while.
6. You shave your cat thus, completely freaking out your child who thinks some kind of monstrous rat has invaded the house.
5. Life is evident in city streets just after the crack of dawn or around sunset. The rest of the time, the city is dead.
4. Before driving you don’t let the car run to warm it up, you turn it on ahead of leaving to cool it down.
3. Cotton! Oh wonderful, hideous, shapeless, cotton kamees- how I love thee!
2. You can wring out your burga after removing it.
1. And the number one way you know summer has hit in Saudia….(drumroll please)
You’re making reservations to be anywhere other than Saudia!
10. If you use the bathroom any time after 10am, the water is so hot after running for 3 seconds that if you don’t wash in that amount of time, you will literally burn you’re a** off.
9. You turn off the water heater to create a reservoir of cool water. Thus, the “cold” tap is used for hot water and the “hot” tap for cold.
8. You can guess a person’s heritage by the B.O. bouquet they leave behind them from the food they eat. And don’t get all uppity and insulted in the comments, in 40C+ weather (120F) EVERYONE stinks despite O.D.’ing on perfume! The stink is universal, just the nuances of an individuals parfum differs from group to group. Examples:
· Egyptians, Levantines, and many Hijazis-garlic
· Najdis-onions
· Indonesian-Indomie and chilli
· Indians-curry
· E.P.’s-Fried fish with onion
· Me- all of the above (I’m just guessing since I eat all those foods. It’s hard to smell your own B.O. unless your Mary Katherine Gallagher from SNL-that’s for u DF)
7. You add at least one additional shower to your daily routine and afterwards apply so much powder, your entire torso becomes white in an effort to stave off above mentioned B.O. for a while.
6. You shave your cat thus, completely freaking out your child who thinks some kind of monstrous rat has invaded the house.
5. Life is evident in city streets just after the crack of dawn or around sunset. The rest of the time, the city is dead.
4. Before driving you don’t let the car run to warm it up, you turn it on ahead of leaving to cool it down.
3. Cotton! Oh wonderful, hideous, shapeless, cotton kamees- how I love thee!
2. You can wring out your burga after removing it.
1. And the number one way you know summer has hit in Saudia….(drumroll please)
You’re making reservations to be anywhere other than Saudia!
Since we don't have an oil well in our backyard and lack funds to travel...here's how we're keeping cool.
17 comments:
Thanks for the laugh. I've never been to Saudi Arabia, but when I read your blog I feel like I'm there. You really bring it to life!
LOL!It must be really hot. My brother used to live in jeddah and he used to complain about it too! sf
Asalaam ualeikum sister.
Hope you'll manage the heat. having been a faithfull reader on your blog for a while now, i thought it was about time to leave my salaam to both you and your family. I have to say I LOVE your posts and your sense of humor, it cracks me up :o) thank you for sharing and for the inlightment on life in Saudi Arabia, now more than ever i truely want to go- how ever impossible the weather and the Hasawis tend to be- lol.
keep up the great writing.
Samia
Letterman? You're not mocking middle-aged white men with big teeth, by any chance? ;-)
Yesterday I stepped out of a well A/C'ed Jeddah restaurant and immediately my shades got fogged over by the humidity. I just grunted "Welcome back, Summer. You SOB!".
As always, I'm surprised by how suddenly summer descends. One minute you're congratulating yourself on how this year you must be acclimatising to the heat and the next week you walk out the front door and "ooofff" you are drenched in sweat, can't see out your sunglasses and the temperature in the compound pool makes it feel more like you are having a bath than a swim. Hooray for summer school holidays, in 8 weeks we will be on a plane back to southern Australia where it will be the middle of winter and we will shiver and be freezing for 9 weeks! (I love the comment about the hot and cold water.....I've often said exactly that, except our hot water service is on the roof so we get 2 hot taps for the duration.)
red jenny, anon, Samia-if you really want the experience...visit the local sauna in an abaya! Whoever the idiot was who said "it's a dry heat" didn't realize many of our major cities are on the coast. The air becomes a tangible, stagnant entity from the humidity. I'd love to be in Jeddah/ Khober/ Dubai in the winter but you could pay me enough to stay there in August!
And Samia, I haven't forgotten you. Inshallah we'll chat someday when it's not my bedtime.
Cairogal- isn't Letterman Jewish too? OOps, I'm anti-Semitic on top of it! Burn me at the stake now and get it over with please:P
SaudiJawa- another favorite of mine is getting in the car and burning my...um...derier...on the hotter than a branding iron seat-belt buckle. I think many of us have our backsides branded (CHEVROLET).
Kathryn, soak up the cold, soak it up.
My husband and I were out on our motorcycles this morning - just like every Thursday morning, but this morning, we barely made it out of the garage before sweat was dripping into my eyes! Hello Summer! I'm with Kathryn - always amazed at how quickly it arrives.
As I've noted before, being from Minnesota I can relate the extreme hot with the extreme cold - we hibernate, we start working on craft projects, we arange our lives around the weather.
Thanks for the laugh.
OMG on the ground rolling around laughing my ever widening a** off!
Umm..stop reading my mind. In my next post i talk about rediscovering my love of SNL...lol
Letterman is white and Wonder Bread, and not Jewish, to the best of my knowledge. Someone's gotta stick up for the pasty man! :)
*laughing* Assalamu alaikum ya SSW, you're a funny one yanno? It's heating up over here too, but we don't (as of yet, I dunno, is it coming still? This is my first summer here) have the humidity...although my err...derriere has been introduced to the evils of the 2-seconds-of-cool-water-then-burn-to-death-water-sprayer. It was an experience (insert pained expression)
The rest of what you spoke about was pretty much the same for us, as your next door neighbors..and hey, we even have identical tiles to the ones that your cute kiddiepool is on. How original eh? ;) Oh to be three years old again...
I have something to add to your list...."you know when it's summer in (Kuwait, in my case) when your fave nasheed tape MELTS in the car. "
(incidently, if you can please explain to me why it is that I drive a brand new car and it came with a tape player..? Is this another perplexing thing that defies logic that is indigenous to the gulf?? and btw, if you are looking for nasheed (english mostly) I have a pretty good collection that I can share insha Allaah
Keep up the terrific writing, sistah :)
lol sad but oh so very true.. *sigh*
Savvy.
Oil well in the back yard? My wife, a Saudi, said she was asked that question many times here in the USA. That and questions about camels.
I dont mind the heat, 120 is just fine, as long as it is a DRY heat.
Those temps with the humidity of places like Jeddah is TOO much.
11. You lower all four windows slightly before getting out of the car.
12. You race your neighbor to the only tree in your neighborhood to provide your car with some shade.
13. In Riyadh, you start deflating your tires to keep them from blowing during daytime.
Seriously hilarious, yet so true...especially No.1.
Our nanny complained about the heat last week. I told her it was cool then the heat was yet to come. we are now getting to the stage of "too hot to go out now" which is something I always want to escape.
When explaining the heat here I always say "You'll begin to sweat in places you never know you could" always walking around w/ the feeling you've peed our pants.. ugghh
Now if someone can explain why water pumps sit at the TOP of the house??
I've never been to Saudi Arabia either but I love your post...and your blog! sis from the usa
Finally catching up with your
archives. Loved #8 - had tears
almost running down cheeks. Comment
about Minnesota made me remember
everyone with plugs sticking out
the front of their cars from heaters on engine. COLD.Keep the
heat there, I'll stay in Ohio where we have between 2 and 4 seasons depending on the year.
USS (unique senior citizen)
CF, Ohio
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