books and gelato, a match made in heaven

Is there anything more blissful than a bowl of gelato and a book? NO!!! 

I just came across a bookstore in my explorations of Nisantisi on foot. Knowing my weakness for books, I contemplated not going in, for a full 4 minutes, outside the store, weighing out the pros and cons of going in vs. not going in.  Going in won that match. My  resistance lasted 20 seconds, my decision further compelled by my lie that I will buy only a book or two. I came out 20 minutes later with 9 books.

Elif Safak--The Gaze, The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love

Orhan Pamuk--Snow, My name is Red

Mohsin Hamid--The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Aravind Adiga--The White Tiger

Continuing with my walk, I discovered a gelato store. Another weakness of mine. Only after I sat down in Cremeria Milano, did I notice they also had a store in Toronto. How ironic. I came all this way to enter a shop in Istanbul when I could have done the same in Toronto. I have to try out that store with a good book in hand to see if I would have a similar experience as here.

Great ambience? My kind of place

It is Saturday morning, and I am wandering Nisantasi in search for a good cup of coffee, waiting for Murat. I have noticed several things in conjunction sway me to a cafe or restaurant, some obvious, some idiosyncratic. Menu. Type of music playing. Ambience. Location. Non-smoking. The type of  customers it attracts/are attracted to it. It is rare to find a place that fulfills ALL these criteria but one strives to at least to be on the lookout for a place that has potential. 

More striking or memorable is when there is discrepancy between several criteria. Imagine this an upscale Italian restaurant, dimly lit with Grecian pendant lights, beautiful ornate Victorian chairs with plush pale green seats and Wham "Wake me up before you go go". What a mood killer! Not that I am anti-Wham. No, I do enjoy a little George Michael here and again but of my own volition and DEFINITELY not when I am in a nice restaurant, trying enjoy my meal.  

nobody's equal

I have heard that nobody is equal to Saudis. To them, there are two types of foreigners: Western and non-Western. And accordingly the treatment or behaviour towards them differs. Westerners can do no wrong, for the most part, and are put up on a pedestal, whereas non-Westerners are on the bottom of totem pole. They are often treated like dirt underneath their shoes.

This demarcation, as horrendous as it is, works for people who belong in one or the other category. But it is problematic for those of us who belong in both or exist somewhere in between both categories.

Someone told me “You can’t be both Somali and Canadian at the same time in Saudi Arabia”. Choose according to how you want to be treated.    

super friendly jeddahines

One thing I keep on noticing is how people here are super friendly. Not friendly in the North American sense of greeting and conversing in the elevator but in more helpful way. Maybe it is because I am new to the city but I feel it is more of an innate desire to help. Numerous people have offered to help me get settled in—they have given me advice on how to haggle, insider info on the best restaurants, basic stuff such as getting phone credits, took me grocery and IKEA shopping, and basically keep me updated on what’s going on at the university. I jokingly told a friend of mine that instead of the cursory goodbye at the end of a conversation, in Jeddah, people end  with the comment “If there is anything you need, anything at all, let me know”. They should just make it official. 

mall trip

As I try to avoid malls in general, it has taken me a while actually visit one called Mall of Arabia. It is shaped like a boat and heard it looks spectacular at night with all the lights aglow. It has 3 floors, the first two filled with American and European stores, while the top floor is the food court along with an indoor skating rink and a mini amusement park with slides and such. One needs to be entertained somehow in a country where movie theatres are outlawed.

It is a bit disconcerting to see only men (mostly foreigners from the Philippines, and other parts of the Arab world) working in the stores, whether is it the MAC makeup store or the Starbucks cafe. The only places I saw women working were in the lingerie section of H&M, which was closed off from the rest of the store, with a maze like entrance, allowing only women to enter, and  Hyper Panda, a Wal-Martesque store where there were Filipina cashiers. This revolutionary move has reverberated shock waves across the country where the segregation of the sexes is heavily monitored and enforced. But it is indicative of a slow change that is taking place in Jeddah, already considered the most liberal city in Saudi Arabia, through the building of King Abdullah University, the first mixed gender university. There have been mixed programs like the medical program previously but never an entire university.  

arabic coffee (qahwa arabeya)

Traditional coffee brewed with cardamom and saffron

laid-back attitude

My new philosophy while here is: until I see it with my own eyes, I won’t believe it. I was promised a single accommodations, I got a double with a roommate, Shoog. I was told that I definitely would be working in Jeddah, now I am told there is a possibility that I might be working in Rabigh, a small town, an hour and half away. I was told to be ready for the 9am bus ride for a 9:30 face-to-face interview with vice dean of the female campus of the university. The bus picked us up at 10 am arriving half an hour later on campus. The vice dean was not even there yet. She arrived 45 minutes later. She started “interviewing”, taking a break every 20 minutes. Just my luck, I was the last to be interviewed out of 23 teachers just after 1pm. Halfway through the interview, someone came in and they started talking. She prompted me to continue talking about myself while she continued her conversation. I swear, I could have been reading Dr. Seuss for all it seemed to matter to her. I think her biggest concern was hearing my accent.