I am lost (in my PhD)

..but I found qibla.

as most of you know by now this PhD is giving me grey hair. Some people assure me that this overwhelming sense of directionlessness is normal and that patience and effort will get me through but I was never good in taking advice seriously. So, now I have myokymia advancing to blepharospasm and according to www.zena.hr (www.woman.cro in croatian) twitching in lower left eyelid means that I will "receive bad news"- I certainly hope it won't have *anything* to do with today's local elections in Croatia.

However I upgraded my smartphone with a super application: Islamic Compass Free by Islam Pray Institute for Quran and Qibla.

It gives you day-specific prayer times and qibla, which is the direction you need to face while praying. And it equals the Ka'aba (literally meaning "the cube"), a cuboid building in Mecca. It is the same building that Muslims revolve around when they are performing pilgrimage (Hajj-the big one or Umrah-"smaller" one).
Ka'aba (and the mosque built around it) is one of the holiest sites in Islam, but it should NOT be worshiped!

obviously, the compass is confused, much like its current user, because Mecca is to the south-east of KAUST

There are 5 prayer times which are sun dependent: first one is before sunrise and last two are before and after sunset/twilight. (note that the second one "shuruq" marks the actual sunrise)

In everyday life it looks like this: ca 15 minutes before actual prayers there is a beautiful melodic call for prayer from the mosque which I guess reminds the congregation to flock and pray. I thought it was universal and that all the mosques have equal calls, but it turned out not to be true: you just need to find yourself in area where you can hear more then one imam calling to witness the variety and cacophony of the diversity.
So far, I liked the KAUST call best.

In usual circumstances, i.e. outside KAUST, during prayer times everything stops working, I guess to allow everyone to pray. That means that all the shops kick out their customers and close, however, restaurants are a little more flexible- they only shut their doors and do not allow anyone in or out. So, if you got your food beforehand, you can eat it in peace, but you are not allowed to pay (dealing with money during prayer times is supposedly a sin) and therefore-leave.

I am not sure about other services (does the traffic stop? what about police-do they stop working?) but when I went for the night dive the group waited for the instructors to finish praying before we could go in the sea.
These strict rules do not apply to the campus, but each building at the University is equipped with a praying room allowing every Muslim to nurture their faith. So, if you are surrounded with the infidels and you're not paying attention, other than the call to prayer and a sporadic Muslim in hurry to get to the mosque on time, you couldn't tell the difference.

The last prayer time lasts about 30 minutes, and when we went to Jeddah, we nearly missed the bus back to KAUST because the waiters weren't allowed to let us go.

Conclusion: the app is absolutely essential when not in KAUST and I am quite convinced that the number of expats' smartphones equipped with this app exceed Muslims' by several orders of magnitude.

about me

I get a lot of questions from my readers like how is *your* life there, how do *you* have fun, what is *your* accommodation like and such, here are some of the answers

Typical "street" in KAUST

The accommodations are different:
if you're VIP, you get a house with sea-view
if you're IP (so not a director or such), you get a house in the Gardens (I've never been but probably it has something to do with vegetation)

Master students and visitors can either stay in Kaust-inn (which is like a hotel) or they get shared apartments.

Once you are a PhD student at KAUST, you get your own flat for singles.
View of the University

So, I'm in the shared 2 storey flat with 2 other flatmates. The common spaces (kitchen, living and dining room) are huge and the rooms are quite big as well. When you move in, you get all the basic supplies (towels, linens, cutlery etc) and there's a laundry room in each flat.

In fact, there is an extra little apartment within the apartment with a separate entrance and bathroom, so completely autonomous- I was told it is for the male person, if the flat is inhabited by a family. That got me thinking what it must be like if you indeed have a family in this country- you have the infrastructure which enables you to lead completely separate lives from your spouse: you do not share the bed, the bedroom or bathroom.








Common rooms

We have a huge balcony overlooking the main campus mosque and the canal (the building is technically on an island), unfortunately, we do not use it at all because it is just too hot. (Our house on the left, mosque on the right)

Most of the buildings are separated by gender, only a few host both sexes, but not in the same unit. The only way to share an actual *flat* with a person of the other gender is by marriage.

Fun facts about KAUST II

Access to the campus is strictly via invitation and only if escorted by an official employee (taxi driver freelancing for KAUST in my case). As soon as you enter you receive your campus ID card and then you can move freely inside the campus. You can also pay a visit to the nearby town of Thuwal by taxi or go to Jeddah by one of the complimentary buses that run daily.

SAMPLE

The card also serves as a ticket to all the recreational facilities, library and public transport.
Everything except food, diving and cinema is for free.


The gym beneath the mosque




The campus library

Women can drive within the walls of campus and are not obliged to wear abaya, the long black robe absolutely compulsory for women in the rest of Saudi Arabia. That results in a variety of styles and fashion on the streets of KAUST- from miniskirts and shorts to persons that only show their eyes. At the University it is necessary to be decently dressed, which means: no spaghetti straps and short bottoms.
The abaya-free zone at KAUST will come as a disappointment to some of you who warned me about how useless it is to buy shorts and bikini. The fact is that at the airport in Jeddah (a city much more liberal than Riyadh, the capital) the authorities tolerate uncovered ladies. Since you are immediately picked up by car, nobody can see your hair or ankles until you reach KAUST, where strict rules regarding dress code do not apply.

Another way to encourage non-revealing fashion is AirConditioning which set to 22 C everywhere so that after a while you wish you had your socks on. All of the closed spaces (and even some corridors between the buildings at the Uni) are constantly cooled not only because of outside temperature (up to 40 in this period) but also because of humidity which is extremely high.
For example, it is pointless to try and dry your clothes outside- they stay damp and start smelling- you have to use a drier in the middle of desert.

There is virtually no crime on campus and the bicycle stands serve only to gently lean your bike against.
There is no religious police and even the "regular" police has to have a special permit/valid reason to come in, all the rest is taken care of by campus security. Since there is no crime there is also no jail but, should you decide to offend the rules/law, the solution is pretty simple: you will receive a one way ticket out of the country and the period to pack your things depends on your ranking: from 1-7 days.

Fun facts about KAUST

KAUST stands for King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

It is not only a university, not only a campus- it is a state within the state.
KAUST spreads to 36 square kilometers which is about the size of Lastovo or 1000 Diocletian's Palaces.

(Lastovo is a beautiful island and Nature Park in central Dalmatia. Diocletian's Palace is the birth place of Split, capital of Dalmatia and UNESCO heritage site)

It is situated at the Red Sea, some 80 km north of Jeddah, 150 north of Makkah. The campus started as a vision of then new king Abdullah and was built in 3 years (for comparison, Diocletian's Palace took 10 years) and inaugurated in 2009.

Apparently King Abdullah had another vision, called King Abdullah Economic City which is being built only 30ish km to the north of KAUST and supposed to have population of 2 million people by 2030.

Legend has it that when KAUST was under construction, 50 000 people were working on it and the site had more cranes at once than anywhere else in the world. Together.
Not at all surprising because it was built in the middle of the desert so one can only imagine what a huge engineering enterprise that must have been. That meant- no roads, no plumbing, no nothing. Just desert.

 Student Center, note the lounge area

 Administration building

Offices in the front, labs in the back

Some rough estimations (personal communication) say that there is currently 5000 people residing at campus where much more accommodation is provisioned, so it is still growing into its infrastructure.

All the faculty members, students and service personnel together with their families live on campus.

KAUST has its own public transportation, hospital, police, schools, daycare, gas station, yacht club, marina, swimming pool, other recreational facilities, burger king, supermarkets and the only cinema in Saudi Arabia. Ah, yes, and the University. In other words, pretty much everything shy of a ski-resort.

psycho- Monday

Being a Muslim country, Saudi Arabia uses 2 calendars: Gregorian and Hijri calendar.
Hijri is a lunar calendar, consisted of 12 months, therefore, 10-11 days shorter than the "western", globally used calendar, so months drift along the year regardless of the seasons.

(For example the month of Ramadan, the ninth month of Islamic calendar, this year falls in the beginning of July when the 4 week fasting begins.)

Hijra, after which the calendar was named, took place in 622 AD and it marks Muhammad's escape from Mecca (Makkah) to Medina (Madinah).
I am now in 1434 AH (anno hegirae).
So, you just add 622, paste the D over the H, and there you have it?
Not quite. Keen mathematician eye will notice that simple subtraction isn't enough, because 2013-1434 does not equal 622, precisely because of those 11 days difference between Gregorian and Islamic calendar.

Anyways, as if it were not complicated enough, Saudi weekend days are Thursday and Friday, which makes the rest of the world compatible with their business hours only 3 days a week. Somehow it doesn't affect their economy much.

Saturday is affectionately called Psychological Monday, Psycho-Monday for friends.

Fun facts about Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

It is a country without a river (drinking water comes from desalinization and water for agriculture from wells).
Pepsi sells better than Coca cola.
Population is estimated to be between 27 and 29 million (it is not known for sure because some places are so remote that the census is performed visually using airplane).

It is 13th largest country in the world:

a tad bit smaller than 1/2 the size of India
as big as 38 Croatias
7 Italys
6 Germanys
3.5 Iberian peninsulas
twice as big as Germany, Benelux and France put together.


You can fill a car tank for 4€ worth of fuel.
It is illegal for women to drive cars however it is OK for them to fly the plane.

Frankfurt news

McCafe and local newspapers

Slobodna Dalmacija ("Free Dalmatia" in Croatian) is a Croatian daily newspaper published in Split. (source: wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodna_Dalmacija)

Foreign editions are printed near Frankfurt, so the current edition is available throughout Germany (not Bremen, though!) on the same day. (source: wikipedia and personal experience)

I bought my copy at FRA for 1,6€ at a news stand and, while handing me the change, the saleswoman said "thank you and have a nice trip" in fluent Croatian.
McCafe has by far the best view of the Frankfurt airport aprons. And you don't even need to buy overpriced tasteless coffee.

Farewells

It is absolutely forbidden to use, produce or sell alcohol in Saudi Arabia.

Farewells

Any form of nudity (including pornography) is strictly forbidden in Saudi Arabia.

daniele

are you following?

test

lorem ipsum drz ne daj