Karak is a Saudi winter drink made from black tea, ginger, pepper, cardammom, vanilla, cinammon, fennel and cloves.
'Birds' is a British expression for young women, eg. They're a nice couple of birds. The American equivalent is 'chicks' and the Australian 'Sheilas'. So I was surprised to find a restaurant named Birds right next to my new home and I was once kept wide awake by a cup of karak served by the friendly chap above from his karak shack in the rat-infested wasteland that I used to call home. From personal experience I can testify that Karak prevents sleep while the same can sometimes be said of birds.
'Birds' is a British expression for young women, eg. They're a nice couple of birds. The American equivalent is 'chicks' and the Australian 'Sheilas'. So I was surprised to find a restaurant named Birds right next to my new home and I was once kept wide awake by a cup of karak served by the friendly chap above from his karak shack in the rat-infested wasteland that I used to call home. From personal experience I can testify that Karak prevents sleep while the same can sometimes be said of birds.
Complaining about your job is common to perhaps 98% of the global population, but when you meet someone like the roadswepper to the right, whining when otherwise comfortable isn't really justified, especially as he tells me his salary for wandering dusty roads in baking heat, inhaling petrol fumes and cleaning up a relentless supply of human waste all day, every day nets him a pitiful $160 a month. With prices now sky-high here as in the rest of the world that amount of money is going pretty much nowhere. However, to his credit, he was still quite chirpy as we chatted outside Q-Eat, a unique restaurant with only two items on its menu - cheeseburger or double cheeseburger.
This photo made me stop and think as I made my way across the desert to work, scratching from the flea-pit I was staying in. It's not a union jack planted by colonists claiming ownership of the land beneath, but a British-made generator used to power a multitude of karak tents that appear each night to refresh the population of Dammam and stop them getting any sleep.
My place of employment above seems to have got its feng shui all wrong, as has the city to its right. Cluttered, disorganised lumps of pre-cast concrete and glass thrown haphazardly down in the sand don't do much for the balance of life, with zero regard to harmony of nature or peace of mind. Banks in Hong Kong, neglecting the advice of feng shui experts, have been known to run into trouble for such an oversight.
Everything looks so similar it took weeks to work out which building I needed to enter. The interior lighting is so strong and the surfaces so shiny and reflective that I can't sit in my office for long periods of time as eyesight is skewed by the fierce glare and I can barely read. Any paperwork gets done at home where the lighting is vaguely more controllable.
Everything looks so similar it took weeks to work out which building I needed to enter. The interior lighting is so strong and the surfaces so shiny and reflective that I can't sit in my office for long periods of time as eyesight is skewed by the fierce glare and I can barely read. Any paperwork gets done at home where the lighting is vaguely more controllable.
But any complaints are soon cut short whenever I see the Bangladeshi roadsweeper who sends most of his $160 back to his family (mother, wife, two kids) just so they can survive.