20th
Killing time at King Saud University
Many people who come to Saudi Arabia to work return to their countries a belt size or two larger and it’s not hard to see why – no pedestrian areas, a car-based society, the full spectrum of fast food restaurants and few public sports facilities (they exist on expat compounds, where you have to be signed in, and at pricey hotels). There is another factor though, and that is boredom. It’s commonly said that pastimes in Riyadh include eating and shopping.
For English teachers at King Saud University’s Preparatory Year building (for males), it’s a culture which needs adapting to. During term time, teachers teach three-and-a-half hours a day and might spend an hour or two planning for subsequent lessons, leaving hours or free time. However, with a hand-scan clock-in system, teachers must remain on campus for the whole working day, or if they do leave to spend time elsewhere – officially frowned upon but commonly done – they must return to clock out. This rule results in dozens of teachers lazily wandering the building, stopping for half-hearted banter with other wandering souls, killing time before they scan out. Some gravitate towards the table-tennis tables near the main entrance, where they will play for hours, others doze at their cubicle desks with an open book abandoned in their laps. Some teachers fill the crawling hours with exercise in the gym, staving off the pounds consumed at the cafes in the building. The majority of the 180 or so teachers from English speaking countries and countless others are quick witted and friendly but adopt a stolid, almost comatose air, as they move slowly down the corridors or slump on the sofas waiting to use the Internet. No one is in any rush to be anywhere or do anything.
For me, Mike, Phil and Ed, the days have been even longer – we arrived a week before the end of the semester, too late to be assigned a class of our own, so we were on sporadic cover duty. This was followed the next week by a morning of written tests and two mornings of speaking tests, a random visit to the main campus to see Gordon Brown speak (more on that later) and a shitload of gaping free time. Next week will be virtually empty but we will still be required to scan in, spend eight hours in the building and scan out again. Between January 4th and mid-February, I will have been paid about four thousand pounds for hours of extended ping pong tournaments, working out in the free gym, shooting the shit over too much coffee, reading my Guardian Weekly, exploring the local food joints and having lunch with an British ex-Prime Minister. I ain’t complaining, but by mid-February I might be.
